I've said this before: much like police officers, our duty as parents is to "protect and serve" our children.  It is in this realm of protection and service that "we" have created, at least for our sons and daughters in the Little League, the "Slaughter Rule." This rule is invoked in order to stop a baseball game that has become beyond embarrassing to the losing team - one who must be losing something in the order of 11-0.  Like so many rulings, I try to see both sides.  On one hand, it's nice NOT to to have the living tar beaten out of you. Think back to the fights in the movies where after the nice guy loses, his opponent's friends rub it in by kicking him in the ribs (thus ensuring an extra week of pain & suffering. In a less dramatic incident, my wife once beat me so mercilessly in Monopoly that, to this day, I refuse to play the game. The shame and obloquy that come from a total trouncing can be a hard thing to recover from. In this vain, it's important to keep folks, especially young ones, wanting to pick themselves up again and come back for more. To make sure this happens, it's important to not allow an earth-shattering event to ruin (in this context) a sport for life; from this perspective the Slaughter Rule helps...  On the other hand, life can be really, really hard. I know a handful of unreasonably good & talented people who have been badly burned - economically, physically, etc. The Slaughter Rule would have helped them out, no doubt, by putting a "stop loss" upon their account so that not too much badness would come their way. The only problem with this rule is that this rule doesn't exist in real life. To pretend it does (by creating and supporting this fictional construct) is a potentially dangerous thing to do. Perhaps it's OK for kids of a certain age to be protected by this rule while being supported by us to (learn how to) endure the occasional downs that invariably come with real life. Like the Tooth Fairy and other sweet falsehoods, an extra blanket can help - provided that we parents remember to take it off before our children grow accustomed to such coddling. I know that in these tough & tumble times, I could use an extra blanket!