Things that get rewarded get repeated, so regularly reward your child for being a winner, right? Turns out, life is not so simple. In life, you’re going to lose more often than you win. You’ve got to get used to that to keep going. Excerpts below from a NY Times article by Ashley Merryman.
Trophies were once rare things.
Today, participation trophies and prizes are almost a given, as children are constantly assured that they are winners. One Maryland summer program gives awards every day — and the “day” is one hour long.
It adds up: trophy and award sales are now an estimated $3 billion-a-year industry in the United States and Canada.
Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.
By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies. They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.
It turns out that, once kids have some proficiency in a task, the excitement and uncertainty of real competition may become the activity’s very appeal.
In June, an Oklahoma Little League canceled participation trophies because of a budget shortfall. A furious parent complained to a local reporter, “My children look forward to their trophy as much as playing the game.” That’s exactly the problem, says Jean Twenge, author of “Generation Me.”
Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, she warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don’t see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.
In life, “you’re going to lose more often than you win, even if you’re good at something,” Ms. Twenge told me. “You’ve got to get used to that to keep going.”
When children make mistakes, our job should not be to spin those losses into decorated victories. Instead, our job is to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that progress over time is more important than a particular win or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child who succeeded when they failed. To do that, we need to refuse all the meaningless plastic and tin destined for landfills. We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial Complex run our children’s lives.
This school year, let’s fight for a kid’s right to lose.
Hi Ashley,
Very good article. I was wondering if you have any FURTHUR research studies related to the group that give up after not being recognized for their accomplishments. Does it mean that these children grow up knowing that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose it is how you play? Are these children as they grow up not going to Perdue what they have earned and allow others to benefit? Does it mean they grow up to be less productive workers because of a sense of realizing that life is not fair and they have seen how they have been cheated?
I would like to add instead of fighting for our kids to lose let’s encourage working to the best of the child’s ability and honoring what we have promised.
I couldn’t agree more…entitlement and rewarding mediocrity will plague the next generation and all they interact with…It is truly more blessed to give than to receive, and I will give encouragement, hold a hard line, love like my life depends on it and unfortunately, because I am human, be misunderstood and even yell from time to time.
This rewarding participation also detracts from the kudos that deservedly go to those who really work hard or achieve something special…
kathy
Good to hear from you, Kathy. It’s great that we get clarity about all this stuff after the fact! Would have been nice to see it all while we were going thru it.
You copied almost EVERYTHING from New York Times Article, ‘Losing is Good for You’ !!!!!