Competitions! The good, the bad and the ugly. What should we do?
This is a heart to heart conversation with other parents. This is that time of the year when a lot of extra curricular activities and competitions happen. I wanted to share what we can do as parents to avoid sending the wrong message to our children. To illustrate my point I used a chart to lay out all the possible outcomes and what lessons they can teach our children.
Then I considered a special case scenario where I introduced aggressive, highly competitive parents and mentors and highlighted their influence on the possible outcomes. In the process I tried to prove how damaging, unnecessary and self defeating their excessive engagement is and why this needs to be avoided, if we really want our children to learn from these experiences. We all want good for our children and we seek opportunities to help our children grow into capable individuals but it does not end there, it is absolutely critical that we check our intentions, our behavior, and how we communicate children. The challenges themselves do not harm children in-fact they can be enriching but the behavior of the parents and mentors both explicit and implicit can either facilitate the valuable learning experience/life lessons or take away from it.
Please leave a comment to let me know if I made any sense or if you would like to add something to it. I would love to hear from you.