Children Must Be Exposed At Healthy Competition

In “Losing is Good for You,” Ashley Merryman argues that society should stop handing out trophies for participation and instead let your child loose sometimes. Merryman states, “today, participation trophies and prizes are almost a given, as children are constantly assured that they are winners.” She later goes on and says that children who are given so much praise will crack “at the first experience of difficulty.” In her opinion, she does not believe that every child should be given a trophy because it will affect how they handle a different task. She claims that children would be better off losing than winning, and she also think that children should not get a trophy for everything they compete in.

Competition between peers makes people strive to try and be better than their opponents, and can be healthy or unhealthy depending on the competitors and their responses to the competition.

Competition is something no one can avoid and will always be a part of society. It is human instinct as well as animal instinct to excel another. Competition is found everywhere. From businesses to schools and even in kid films like The Incredibles, competitions are everywhere. While competition does have negative views, it positively enforces us to improve ourselves and set goals. It brings forth inspiration to fix our past mistakes to make sure that we will win next time. While improving ourselves we can find goals that we are proud of achieving.

Competition is prevalent in various aspects of life, including sports, school, and jobs. Everyone at some point in their lifetime will have to compete against others in order to achieve a goal or earn a prize. It’s how the world has worked for a long time; it’s survival of the fittest and this minor competition between everyone is how we have continuously gotten smarter, faster, and stronger. Competition is necessary to a certain degree, but how much is too much? It’s definitely not a bad thing, and as long as there’s a healthy amount, it can be beneficial because it fosters self-improvement, and it will push people to go all out and try their absolute best.

Alfie Kohn states that “competition by its very nature is always unhealthy” and has written an essay opposing the concept. There are various examples of competition in the world today, from sports that the world watches on television, to spelling bees children in elementary and middle school participate in. Competition is a part of our daily lives whether we’re aware of it or not; however, it does have its disadvantages that leads me to support Kohn’s opinion.

By participating in competitive sports at an early age, kids develop life skills to help them with this dilemma. They learn that when they see others being successful, that it is due to the hard work they put in and not just by chance.

After reading Children Need to Play, Not Compete by Jessica Statsky I thought she brought up some very valid points. I do think that this is a topic that should be scrutinized. I have a different view of the subject. I think that competition can be physically, and psychologically harmful if left unchecked by "abusive/uncaring" adults. I do think that with the right, caring and team work fostering environment competition can fostered without harmful effects, and can lead to learning lifelong skills that can bring emotional joy.

It’s been debated that having kids participate in sports can be either a positive or negative factor in a child’s development. Is participating in sports a positive outcome in a youth’s development? Through my own personal experience and through the research that I have conducted I believe that participating in sports is a true benefit to a child’s development. Participating in sports can contribute to a healthy individual, developing problem-solving skills, social interaction, promotes following direction and rules, goal setting and creating plans, promotes self-esteem, reduces stress, helps academic success, and a higher quality of life.

Children are better with dealing with failure when it is visibly present; making them accept defeat and helping gain the necessary tools to deal with that defeat and overcome it. Vaughn Carney suggests that, “Losing is not pleasant, but in a competitive society such as ours, losing forces one to stop, think, regroup, and improve. It is past time to end the “self-esteem” game. We must ground our children in the real world and how it works.” If we build our children’s self-esteem up by giving them trophies then when they lose they are less likely to take it as easy as if they had been accustom to failing. If a child fails then when they reach adulthood they will be able to deal with those failures appropriately instead of feeling like a complete failure. Not to mention, they will be more likely to overcome their failures and use them as stepping-stones to improve their

In Hannah Pandels’s article, Healthy Competition is Good for Children, she makes the statement that it, competition, is a necessary and essential part of our society today. This article was written partly in response to numerous other articles stating the opposite but one was singled out. The American author Alfie Kohn. Now this fits into the childhood development debate that has been ongoing lately regarding the theory that today’s kids are more entitled to things and have less problem solving skills then previous generations. With that back ground she begins to vocalize her thoughts regarding the issue. Her thesis is clear, it is in the title for goodness sakes, that competition is a normal part of growing up and it is essential to the proper development of children. She states “competition breeds excellence” (Pandel) this simple statement engulfs the

They have been blamed for children not working hard to receive a prize for their hard work on the playing field because children know no matter how much effort they put into the sport there will always be a reward. Sports are a great example of earning things for hard work. The children participating in sports need to work hard then be rewarded. “The hard work shows the children how to build a work ethic and it also teaches them that later in life they’ll receive a prize for their hard work” (Jacobi). Building a work ethic is important at a young age, it sculpts the children into the people they are supposed to be in the future. The real world is difficult. Children need to know, they have to work hard and strive for greatness to be successful. The children need to understand that success will help them in the long run. Participation rewards give children a different outlook of the real world. In everyday life, you work hard to pay bills, and to support your family. In your childhood is when you learn that hard work pays off, “It's understood that parents want their children to succeed, and feel as if they won, but children need to learn that in life things have to be earned and not handed to them” (Johnston). Personally, there should always be a winner or a loser, because when you lose you will work harder to win the next time. Competition in all sports

Evidently, everybody would like to be a winner, but sometimes no matter how hard one works, they still lose. Failure is an inevitable part of life, thus, children might as well be taught how to effectively get back up and start anew. Indeed, “If children are never allowed to fail, they will never succeed” (Source D). This “fear of rejection” (Source B) and “fear of public failure” (Source C) when playing a sport is the exact reason as to why sports should continue displaying its competitive nature. A lost soccer game gives opportunity for a child to practice harder for the next game in order to take home the win.

Throughout history, competition has been displayed between people in many different ways. From worldwide events such as the Olympics to smaller contests such as a class geography bee, competition promotes people to give their peak performance, put in maximum effort, and better themselves. As a result, the winners receive an award as a symbol of their hard work while the losers go home empty-handed. Farmers nurture their livestock for years to enter for a blue ribbon, athletes compete head-to-head to win a gold medal, and businesses advertise their companies to steal customers and surpass their opponents. However, children today are being taught with a different rulebook. Nowadays, children that take part in competitive teams are being given

Using a fun and working sports to help them work around challenges is a perfect to learn. Everything in life will have challenges and the faster you learn better you understand and learn to handle them. There are tons of challenges in sports as in getting better. This means, in everything you can get better. These are lesson, lessons to learn while being in sports. Sitting in front of a screen is not making you learn anything or get taught anything. And for people you say about the brain damage is also a challenge to overcome. You can get head injures just my crossing the road , so we should not every cross the street. That is ridiculous, you will be wrap in bubble wrap. There are challenges to face and sports are the way to go to help work around them. Seewald says “Some kids are more competitive than others. Parents will start to see the competitive nature of kids coming through at home through playing board games and other activities. Putting them on a team gives them a healthy outlet for competition”(Paragraph 4). This is significant that there are better way for competition and this is a great to get there. A correlation has been found between regular exercise and mental health among students in general as they move into the teenage years. “Among students who exercised 6 to 7 days a week, 25.1% felt sad for two weeks or more in the past 12 months, compared to 35.7% of students who reported exercising on 0

Not everyone believes competitive sports are good for kids. Some people believe competitive sports are harmful to kids. Competitive sports are good because they improve overall health, teach life lessons, and positively impact kids lives.