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Expert Q&A
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| By Scott Lancaster | ||
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My sons, separated by 2 1/2 years, have the opportunity to play on the same baseball team this year. Should I allow it? I am worried about fueling sibling rivalry and shining a spotlight on one's strengths and another's weaknesses.
As a parent, I wouldn't be concerned about your two sons playing on the same team, I'd be delighted. This is a situation where sports and a team can bring your two sons closer together.
Most sibling rivalries that I've seen are a result of being too competitive with one another. By being placed on the same team, both of your sons will be striving to fulfill the same goals together. As a matter of fact, they may even forget they're brothers and consider themselves teammates while competing.
Sports can be a great forum for developing a variety of life skills, such as leadership, responsibility, self-control, and teamwork. Athletes experience real-life scenarios at every level of competition. Among the most common experiences are learning to work together as a team, and overcoming adversity. No one is perfect, obviously, and sports give you the opportunity to test how you handle, learn, and recover from adversity. The acquired skill of accepting a mistake made by yourself or a teammate, learning together from it and moving beyond it can be invaluable throughout life. By placing both boys on the same team there is no better environment for your sons to learn to get along than by achieving both small and large goals together.
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