When I was 10 years old I played little league baseball and I sucked! Not “I’m just being modest” sucked, I mean full fledged sucked. We had a cookout at the end of the season at the coaches house and one of the things he did was go around telling everybody what their batting average was. When he got to me I already knew what mine was because it was so easy to figure out, 0.00. Yep, goose egg for a season. I did not get even one hit during the whole season. I wasn’t really upset by this and it didn’t cause any deep, psychological wounds because the coach said it out loud in front of the rest of team.
Can you imagine the fallout from a helicopter-parent (they are constantly hovering over their kids) if that happened today? One of the things that drives me crazy is that we’ve turned into a “trophies for everybody” world. Everybody’s a winner and nobody loses. It’s gotten so freaking ridiculous we don’t even keep score in kid’s athletics anymore. All because somewhere along the way, somebody decided that kids couldn’t handle the humiliation of not winning so of course the answer was to simply stop keeping score.
This is one of those things that was almost a good idea. The problem is life doesn’t work that way. Nobody always wins. So now our world is full of kids/young adults who don’t know how to lose. They don’t know how to use a defeat as a learning experience.
I’m not trashing people under 25, I’m trashing their parents. They are the ones who are responsible for putting their kids out into out into the world totally unprepared for the harsh realities of life.
If you’re a dad, one of the most valuable lessons you can teach your kids is how to fail. Help them understand that failure doesn’t have to be permanent. Failing at something doesn’t make them a failure. Teach them to honestly evaluate a failure to see what can be learned from the process.
Or maybe you need to learn that failure does not have to define your life. A great way for a kid learn how to handle not winning is by watching how their dad handles it when things don’t go as planned. Does he throw a tantrum, talking about how unfair the boss was and how he should have gotten the promotion or does he try to figure out what the other guy did to get the promotion?
Not just your kids but the other young guys you’re around. Remember, young guys are looking for older guys to help learn how to handle life like a man.
Either, can we all agree that Trophies for Everybody is a bad idea?
