Moms Talk: What's the Right Age for Competitive Sports?

Welcome to "Moms Talk," our weekly Wednesday feature about a parenting topic of local interest.

Each week we'll post a question by a mom about being a mom.

Join the conversation with your comments, questions and answers to keep the discussion rolling. Feel free to use links to point your neighbors toward businesses, services, events or volunteer organizations in our Rockville Patch directory or calendar.

We'll also have members of our Moms Council weigh in with questions and comments.

Now, on to this week's discussion ...

Recently, "Mom and More" columnist Amy Mascott wrote about .

Spring is a popular time for youth sports. If you have a young child, they might be giving baseball (or T-ball), softball, soccer or another sport a try for the first time.

The first year of playing team sports can be challenging—in ways good and bad. It's often one of the first times that children find themselves working with others toward a common cause. It's a chance to meet new friends—and the challenge of getting along with teammates. It's learning how to be a gracious winner—and how not to be a sore loser.

Youth sports also are often a child's first dose of competition. Hopefully it's healthy competition. Sometimes it's not.

And as children—and their playing ability—grow, so does the competitiveness. T-ball becomes hardball. Hardball becomes travel ball. The herd of kids chasing a soccer ball around a pitch becomes a herd of parents chasing a youth travel soccer team around the country. And that leads us to today's question:

What's the right age to start kids in youth sports? What's the right age to ratchet up the competitiveness with so-called select or travel teams? How do you teach kids the emotional skills to survive and thrive in competitive sports? And how do you know if it's too much too soon?