Nation of Wimps

I think when discussing our generation being far  wimpier than previous generations we are talking about that fact that we can't stand up for ourselves, or live in an overprotected home. I do not however think the policies of AYSO apply here. I think that having a league that has the motto of "everyone plays" is a great idea. It cultivates a love of the sport at a lower level of play, commitment and pay if you cannot reach the standards of any of those three. I think competition is healthy and we should have to compete for what we want because that is what it is will be like for the rest of our life, however that doesn't have to start on the soccer field in 1st grade.

Our generation has parents that micro manage our work, brew over our safety when we are not home and check our electronics. The term bullying now is something that is used in everyone kids vocabulary but how many of those kids are bullied to the extent that others in the past were with physical violence. This is not to say that kids now are not still truly getting bullied and that electronics have made it easier to do so, but that those cases are few and far between. Yet 83% of girls and 79% of guys say they were bullied either in school or online. This is most likely not true but a combination of parents overreactions' and kids melodrama causes situations to escalate quickly to so called "bulling" when in fact this is an overreaction. Bulling often stems from competition and I believe that competition is healthy and necessary to teach that life isn't always fair and you need to really go after what you want if you have any hope of achieving that goal. However this does not always need to be present in Kindergarten soccer tournaments. 

I babysit a lot of kids in my neighborhood and whenever I babysit on Saturday the kids will still have their soccer jerseys on so I ask them how their game went. You can just see their face light up when they tell you that there team won and that they score. They don't understand that the other team won too, they are just so happy that they feel like they did something good. This is a quality that high school soccer is lacking. When we are losing, we get down on ourselves and walk away kicking ourselves for the miss pass instead of being elated by the goal that we or our teammate score. Encouraging kids to play a sport not to win but to love it is extremely valuable and does not make them wimps. 

~Sahale