It's Only a Game!

How can parents encourage a kid to love sports and be a good sport too? Step 1: stop yelling

My 11-year-old cousin Nathan is a sports fiend. On the basketball court or soccer field, he is a study in gravity-defying grace. He can cite volumes of baseball trivia and knows the rule book by heart. But like any kid his age, he is still learning how to play well with others. Nathan has struggled to accept losses without blaming his teammates or coaches or the officials, and to win without gloating.

Go to one of the estimated 10,000 Little League baseball games playing somewhere in the country tonight, and you'll see thousands of Nathans and Jennies striving to master not...

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