Winning at All Costs

Every parent I know always wants the best for their kids. They want them to be the best in whatever it is they pursue; they want them to be the best person they can be. I remember when growing up, my parents would always push my brother and I to do our absolute best. There was never pressure to only ever win, but to give it our every effort and let things happen as they will. As such we always knew that win or lose, whatever happened was a result of our hard work or lack thereof. I didn't always win nor did I always come out on top, but it taught me that if I wanted something I would have to work hard to achieve it. Whether it was school or work or anything else for that matter, I had to work hard for it. Lately it seems that the desire to be an all-rounded person is going away and the belief that winning is the only viable option is leading to some rather disturbing trends.

In Northern Virginia, the head of the South County Youth Association Football League, Dan Hinkle, e-mailed his dictum to the coach of his son's football team. According to the e-mail published in the Washingon Post, Hinkle demanded that his son play on defense during every practice and during every game. It was Hinkle's belief that his son was good enough to play on defense and only defense and that the coach should play him as such. Anything else was unacceptable. Now I don't know all the circumstances around Hinkle's 'decision' to give this ultimatum to his son's coach, but I can say this; it was a stupid decision.

In earlier blogs I had talked about how so many kids these days are so groomed to win that anything else is just an alien concept to them. Parents, regardless of what many people choose to believe, can either reinforce or break this belief. If parents constantly tell their kids that winning is the only acceptable outcome then anything less is seen as failure. For a lot of people out there they will say that this is exactly why so many people out there don't win at anything. They seem to think that accepting anything less than victory is a defeatist attitude. I, on the other hand, see the occasional loss as something that will make a kid a well-rounded person. I have been to a number of martial arts tournaments and it is sad to see so many parents out there being so hard on their kids that they begin to cry if they earn second place.

Kids need to know that winning anything less than first place is acceptable. They need to know that there is a difference between being given a place on a team and earning it. Anyone can be given something, but it never means as much as when it is earned. It's so fulfilling for a person to earn something, anything, that comes out of hard work and perseverance. Parents do a lot of things to shield their kids from disappointment or from feeling less than the best that they can be. It's for a good cause, but in the end, it shields them from reality as well. Commissioner Hinkle of the SCYA may have wanted to make his son a perennial winner but the way about which he went doing it was wrong.