There is nothing like a rule modification in junior sport to get the ex-jocks, overambitious coaches and most-unfiltered ugly parents leaping up and down on the sidelines and ranting "The world has gone mad!"

Remove scoreboards from under-10s games, where there is no competition ladder and its presence merely brings out the worst in spectators, while the kids know who is winning anyway?

Allow young batters to stay at the crease for a specified time no matter how many times they go out so they can improve their skills rather than just watching more accomplished teammates?

Propose rules, as AFL Queensland has done recently, handicapping teams who run up the score in early-age junior games and win by more than 15 goals, an extension of the mercy rule common in other sports?

Move your children to safe ground and standby for the howling of those who believe the earliest forms of organised sport must be played with the same earnest ferocity as the big leagues, while blithely ignoring the impact on the kids on the field.

The generation war has handed those demanding children's sport be played with the same winner-loser mentality as at the elite level a handy yet serially misused catchword — resilience.

You see, according to those with hazy memories of their own playing days, our under-10s beating your team by 20 goals is going to fortify your children against all the future challenges life throws at them.

My kid opening the batting and opening the bowling while your kid watches from the pavilion after going out first ball will give your kid the resilience to study harder, work longer and survive all of life's slings and arrows.

"You're welcome. Now kill those losers, Nathan!"

Heavy losses can deter kids from coming back to play sport. ( ABC News: Jen Browning )

Except, of course, this blindly and in some cases wilfully misunderstands how junior sport might help create resilience — if it does at all — and also the ramifications for participation and retention across sports.

The resilience myth is often perpetrated by former top-level players who, in the earliest junior grades, made very few of the supposedly character-forming ducks and suffered none of those 100-point beltings that supposedly turn tender children into sporting, social and workplace ninjas.

If you follow their logic, those who meted out these thrashings would have the personal resilience of a wet paper bag, having moved effortlessly through the lowest junior grades.

So, where did their own resilience come from?

The truth is that any resilience that might be gained from junior sport comes not from the outcome but from within the game itself — tackling bigger kids, facing fast bowling, stepping up to take the penalty kick.

Creating these challenges means games must have a competitive element. But there is a tipping point where a contest becomes a walkover or a lesser player — or even a whole team — becomes a mere spectator and the experience is counterproductive for everyone.

You might argue this competitive threshold has been lowered in modern times because children have more choices. Once the factory setting for Australian kids, sport is now merely one of many options, with screen time the most obvious competitor.

But in that context, surely it is even more important to make sport enjoyable and immersive, to measure retention rather than results and to discard blind obsessions about how the game should be "just like it was when I was a kid".

Another common complaint about modified rules is that "they punish the good kids". Yet, once the star ruckman or gun full-forward has set up a 10-goal lead, there are often only bad habits to be gained by stacking on more.

Either way, no one is missing out on an NRL contract or the AFL draft because they only got to play half a game of under-10s in their chosen position.

Often overlooked is the experience of the less-talented players on the teams inflicting ritual humiliations, who are deprived the chance to test their skills as the best players are given more game time and more prominent roles.

The Courier-Mail quoted one volunteer asking: "If your team is winning by 80 points at three-quarter time, which does happen, what is a coach to tell his players? Stop trying?"

Once it has become obvious a game is a mismatch, why not instead send the star midfielder to the back pocket to learn a new role and give others a chance to shine? Even if this enrages the most ambitious of the junior parents, who quite literally count their children's kicks, marks and handballs in under-10 games.

Even with modified formats that encourage full participation, it is common for junior cricket teams to win premierships by having the best five or six players do most of the batting and bowling. Typically, the kids who don't participate disappear the next season and the club loses a bunch of potential lower-grade players and volunteers.

The younger a child walks away from a sport and all its potential benefits, the less likely they will have developed the skills to return in an older age group. They aren't just lost for a season or two, but forever.

So, the world hasn't gone mad when you impose rules that keep more children on the field for longer. It's lost its mind when you don't do everything possible to ensure they stay.