Mentally Damaging Little Kids

[Trunkage]

So this happened today

No, every child should not get an award - this is why

This "everyone wins a prize" is problematic on several counts.

www.essentialkids.com.au

I actually agree with most of this. You should be give rewards based on effort levels. With one exceptIon. The age. Typically, in Oz, students don’t get letter grades on their report cards until grade 2/3. cards are usually more about about what the children can do, not comparing them to others. Younger children usually need far more external support than older children. A lot of 5 years old need encouragement just to try. This competition rewards everyone that is grade 2 (age 7)and under and this writer thinks that bad, even for young children

So, is there a time young children shouldn’t worry too much about competition? If so, at what time should that stop? How bad is the damage?

Also, I hear this idea of everyone getting prised was prevalent at school for all kids and ruined Millennials. Anyone have that experience?

 

[Worgen]

Ahh, I was hoping this was a 'how to' thread.

Well, I can see the point, but at the same time I think the start of the award for everyone thing started mainly as a response to overly harsh criticism that would stop a child from even wanting to develop a talent they had into something worth while.

 

[SupahEwok]

Nah, I think the start of the participant award was to shut up soccer moms who would insist their little darlings are the specialest of all and needed awards and trophies to be "winning" no matter the reality or whether the team as a whole didn't pull through.

That said, I don't think it actually matters, and if it does, it would just diffuse competitive spirit in kids, and thank God for that. Competitive people are tiresome and to my observation full of unhappy attitudes. If the world as a whole could mellow out, that'd be swell.

 

[Gordon_4]

For sports specifically I think they should start keeping records of the kids state of play. You know, a stat sheet. That way the kid gets something but it isn’t a trophy: it’s a record of information.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

"Everyone gets a prize" because that's how exercise works. You literally get a reward for participating. If you're trying to achieve some lofty goal, you'll soon be on the couch all day eating ice cream. The same applies to many things in life.

I also fail to see how losing in a sport helps you deal with adversity in life. First of all, children lose all the time in the many games they play.

Moreover, how is putting dreams and expectations into children for a $5 plastic trophy in any way good for them? Then when they lose, they begin to cry, yet no one cries when they lose a game during recess. What lesson is this supposed to teach? "Winning and losing were all part and parcel of life?" I'd say that making life to be a dichotomy between winners and losers is a poisonous worldview.

 

[Satinavian]

I am an amateur and don't have a degree at pedagogics

But i think somewhere between the ages 5 and 8 a child should learn losing in competitions. That to really try is not always enough to win because other parties also really try. Winning is not a reward for giving your best. Winning is being better than others.

Now i also think that teaching that is best done by parents and slowly and not necessarily via sports. Bord games and the like are better. Or educational games. When a a small child is exposed to such a new game, parents usually let the child win. But from 5 onward, they should occasionally let the child lose and at the age of 8 they should generally not hide their skill at all anymore.

 

[Kwak]

Yes, children are highly hazardous to your mental health and should only ever be considered and handled by highly emotionally-stable adults.
Everyone else should get permanent contraception and enjoy a life free of that particular burden.

 

[Trunkage]

Yes, children are highly hazardous to your mental health and should only ever be considered and handled by highly emotionally-stable adults.
Everyone else should get permanent contraception and enjoy a life free of that particular burden.

I failed to listen to the brochure. Also, I don't think it possible to be stable enough to handle children

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Millenial here! I don't remember any participation prizes being handed out. Still ended fucked up though. The other variables seem to have made a far stronger impression. Children are intimidating little creatures, uncomfortable to be around with their minimal grasp on morals and etiquette. I just try to keep them away from the knife draw/rack and the rest seems to work itself out. No prizes for them. Well...apart from the incredibly difficult conundrum of them showing me their shite drawings and me having to lie to them every time with a painfully grimaced "looks lovely, well done!" "What the fuck even is that mess??" "Keep practicing?" So, I guess that's similar maybe to a participation award, except with far more guilt to bank.

 

[Kae]

So I've heard of these participation medals all my life and mainly people complaining about them but I never actually saw them.
Of course I'm from México so maybe this was a thing in the USA but not here, but growing up the school system made it very clear that not only was I bad at sports but also that I was a loser because of it, mostly by being active teasing by the P.E. teacher but also because I was the only kid that had bad grades on P.E. which is to say barely passing grades, but yeah there was no coddling or medals for trying at all but T.V. was already complaining about those things so it was already a thing.

So yeah, as for how to handle children, I don't know I don't have any nor do I have any nephews so I've never taken care of them, due to this I don't feel very qualified to comment on that at all, especially considering that I don't plan to have children at all.

 

[Trunkage]

Children are intimidating little creatures, uncomfortable to be around with their minimal grasp on morals and etiquette.

So what your saying is that children are pretty people on Twitter?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Nah, I think the start of the participant award was to shut up soccer moms who would insist their little darlings are the specialest of all and needed awards and trophies to be "winning" no matter the reality or whether the team as a whole didn't pull through.

That said, I don't think it actually matters, and if it does, it would just diffuse competitive spirit in kids, and thank God for that. Competitive people are tiresome and to my observation full of unhappy attitudes. If the world as a whole could mellow out, that'd be swell.

From my experience with online games, I don't think it's possible to remove competitiveness and the attempt to has only led to generations of kids not being taught how to temper and direct their innate competitiveness. This has led to a lack of real discipline once the competitive nature comes out since their elders tried to pretend it didn't exist.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, the article is conflating sports and exercise, which I wish people shouldn't do. They aren't separate, but they aren't the same.

If you consistently come last at every sporting thing you try, but by doing so you improve your physical fitness by exerting yourself, and the winners are just coasting by, who's really won there?

 

[SupahEwok]

From my experience with online games, I don't think it's possible to remove competitiveness and the attempt to has only led to generations of kids not being taught how to temper and direct their innate competitiveness. This has led to a lack of real discipline once the competitive nature comes out since their elders tried to pretend it didn't exist.

I don't think people are innately assholes with a desire to dominate other people, it's something they learn. And that's what "competiveness" is.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So what your saying is that children are pretty people on Twitter?

It would be more correct to say that the "pretty people on Twitter" are children.

 

[Worgen]

Millenial here! I don't remember any participation prizes being handed out. Still ended fucked up though. The other variables seem to have made a far stronger impression. Children are intimidating little creatures, uncomfortable to be around with their minimal grasp on morals and etiquette. I just try to keep them away from the knife draw/rack and the rest seems to work itself out. No prizes for them. Well...apart from the incredibly difficult conundrum of them showing me their shite drawings and me having to lie to them every time with a painfully grimaced "looks lovely, well done!" "What the fuck even is that mess??" "Keep practicing?" So, I guess that's similar maybe to a participation award, except with far more guilt to bank.

In all likely the whole participation award thing might have happened a few times in one school then the internet ran with it and so everyone assumes that all the kids today got awards for every single thing which will lead them to be snottly little shits because everyone hates children and they want a reason to hate children aside from children are the worst.

 

[JoJo]

Another millennial chiming in to say that widespread participation trophies were never my experience. I remember at middle school, we used to do a yearly cross-country run where everyone in the year would be pitted against each other, though divided by gender. At the end of the race, you would be given your position compared to the rest of the boys or girls in your year. Naturally, kids got quite competitive about this. I usually came somewhere near the middle, but one of my friends was on the heavier side and came second to last out of about seventy kids. Can't have been too encouraging.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I don't think people are innately assholes with a desire to dominate other people, it's something they learn. And that's what "competiveness" is.

One of the reasons you don't help a baby bird hatch from its egg is because the very act of forcing itself out of the egg gives it the strength and will to live. Similarly, competition, while it can cause the worst in us to come out, is also a method for measuring oneself and seeing where they need to improve.

To put it another way, a question I like to ask of people is which of the seven deadly sins they are most and least guilty of. The reason I ask this is because it can give you an idea of them and how they see themselves. And the thing is, you learn a strength from what they say is a weakness and vice versa. Someone that says they are guilty of Sloth might also be more relaxed and less prone to anger, someone that is most guilty of Pride may also be very capable even if they overestimate it.

Competitiveness is not taught, it is inherent in all animals. Humans are different in that we only compete with each other since we have no natural predators. If one doesn't compete then there is no drive to improve but if they do compete but haven't been taught how to do it morally then they can become nasty and vicious.

As with all things in life. Going too hard one way leads to problems, everything is about balancing carefully on a ball.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Humans are different in that we only compete with each other since we have no natural predators.

I know a virus that would like to speak with you...

 

[09philj]

The validation of authority figures as being superior to my peers was a significant motivation for me to work.

This is why nobody ever noticed that I actually had Attention Deficit Disorder and I failed my A levels the first time round and then the first year of university.