Inspired Families: Nurturing little people

Encouraging a competitive child to compete.

Tuesday 13^th March 2012

In today's cut throat world, competitiveness and having the "x" factor are pressures which, like the thief in the night, seep into the minds of our children, mutating and morphing the fragility of the developing personality. Where does a healthy competitive drive and achievement orientation end, at what point does the need and craving for excellence and acknowledgement become dysfunctional?

As parents we love our children unconditionally, and hopefully in as many ways possible we tell and show them this. But when they step into real-world situations that demand or at very least expect unwavering accomplishment, the sub-conscious mind gets infiltrated with contradicting messaging. A parent’s, “do your best and have fun” is replaced by rivalry, (interpreted) expectations and continual pushing.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that children should be challenged and pushed to achieve their best. Without opportunity to reach their potential, they would grow into hollow adults, carrying bucket loads of “what if’s.”

The complexity comes in understanding the personality type of each child. To one child, a push is what they need to become motivated, to another it’s an opportunity to excel and to yet another it’s a push right over the edge into fear of failure, into a space where talent and potential are lost to the inner need to excel.

I was fortunate enough to witness this very thing at this afternoon’s swim training. With a “friendly” inter-club gala coming up, the young swimmers were encouraged to participate. One boy, who must be in grade one, about 6 or 7 years old, who, for all intents and purposes seems not particularly enthusiastic to participate at all in the sport, showed no desire to put on display at a gala the hard work and developments that he has made. With some jovial coercing he agreed to participate in one race at the upcoming event. Another young chap’s response was simply “cool, well, I haven’t been training here for long but it will be cool to see what happens at a gala.” Lastly, the littlest boy who I’d seen consistently come in first through all the training exercises over the afternoon, shrunk away at the suggestion of a gala. To make it worse, the well-meaning encouragements of “you don’t have to win,” simply reinforced his obvious inner need to excel, “if you’re saying I don’t need to win, you obviously expect me to win.”

A competitive child is not the same as a child with an all-consuming need to succeed, one who would trade-in the possibility and opportunity to succeed, for the safety of not losing. I bet the world loses countless champions in all sports and fields to this trade-in. So the question remains, how do we encourage these competitive kids to compete.

I would speculate, that within these children, it’s actually not so much a competitive streak, but an inherent absence of self confidence, self esteem and self worth, with definition of self being so entangled in excellence of performance. My guess would be that the more these children are pushed into competing and performing, before resolving their lack of self-esteem, the more likely they will be to back away completely.

My hypothesis would be the competitive child who shrinks away from competing should not be encouraged to compete, but rather be coached to master the skills of self-confidence, self-worth independent of achievement and firm belief in their unconditional acceptance. Creating a space where “losing”, while may sting, won’t destroy.

Your child is a little person, trying to understand the world, and the world is a place saturated with harsh realities.

Self Esteem . . .

Belonging . . .

Bullies . . .

Peer Pressure . . .

Abuse . . .