Voices
me. “We don’t really care about
who’s winning. And the game
doesn’t really have a name. The
kids make up the rules as they go.”
It was hard to argue—at first.
After all, there’s nothing wrong
with fostering creativity or encouraging free play. And without a
“loser,” there was no risk of sending home a crying kid. Right? But,
I wondered, aren’t we missing out
on teaching kids a valuable lesson in how superior performance
reaps greater praise? Isn’t there
something to be said for being
rewarded for working hard, rather
than just showing up?
Of course there is. Right now,
there’s a divide happening between those who believe that kids
should be shielded from the idea of
competition—that no child should
ever be put in the position of losing, which means everyone’s in the
position of winning—and those
who, well, advocate for a more reality-based approach. I’m with the
latter. Because letting kids win, or
avoiding declaring a winner at all,
is setting them up for disappointment and failure later on.
As my son got older, the kids
played sports in a more traditional
way: with rules and boundaries.
And yet, the end of each season al-
PEGGY
DREXLER
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
ways included some sort of awards
ceremony during which medals or
trophies were handed out to every
child. You may think this is a good
thing: Let’s help kids feel better
about themselves, no matter what.
Boost their egos, instill confidence.
But it’s actually doing the opposite.
Later on, these are children who
may have trouble recognizing their
own successes. They may have a
hard time motivating themselves
to work hard, or push
to earn what’s theirs.
Why would they?
Aren’t
They’ve grown accuswe missing
tomed to having victo- out on
ries and praise handed teaching kids
to them with zero
a valuable
to little effort. They
lesson in
have no faith in their
how superior
own abilities because
performance
we’ve never given
reaps greater
them reason to. This
praise?”
leaves them feeling
empty and ill prepared
for life in the “real world.”
Consider what may happen
when we teach kids about healthy
competition, and how victories
earned are sweeter than those
blithely handed over. Through my
work with families I met Fran, a
woman who never took a physics
course until college but ended up