Have you ever watched highly competitive sports with your kids? Let's talk about the kinds of messages our kids get from these games. 

Many years ago, Lou Tice coached high school football. The Pacific Institute still does a lot of work with college and professional athletes. Lou always said that he tried to make it clear to the kids he coached, that the point of competition is to bring out the best in us. It's great to win, but for every winner there's a loser, and sports isn't about always being the winner. It's about playing the game to the best of your ability.  

However, sometimes the message that comes across from the media, when you watch highly competitive sports, is, "It's not how you play the game, it's whether or not you get a gold medal that counts." Watching this summer's Olympics in London, how many times the broadcasters refer to the "medal count"?  It was in the newspapers everyday, and constantly popping up in the graphics behind the broadcasters.

It is a concern when kids seem to have their whole identities tied up with whether or not they win. You want to applaud the rock-solid self-esteem of people like Kent Ferguson, who barely made it into the diving finals in the Olympics in Barcelona years ago. He said, "I'm just as good a guy if I didn't make the finals as if I were in them."  

That's the lesson our kids need to learn from competitive sports. It's not if you win. It's not even how you play. It is how you value yourself and what you learn when the game is over that really counts.