Hedwig
Antique member
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I disagree about almost every word in here.That seems like foolish behaviour from a coach at that young age for sure... At that age, the sport should be about building skills and passion for the sport. However with that said, there are many of us who are also tired of "participation awards" for everyone...trophies for all.. "everyone passes", no score keeping because you don't want kids to have their feelings hurt if they lose etc. There IS something to be learned by winning and losing. Kids need to learn at an early age that effort matters and sometimes even with strong effort, there are others who are better than you. All kids have a talent and excel at something, but just because we want to be good at everything, doesn't mean that we will be...
What we are seeing now in schools is crazy. Kids can't handle failure. They can't handle things not going their way, because they have always been told that they are great at everything...they can "be whatever they want to be" and they can "do whatever they want to do". This simply is not true.
Society needs to shift back to a more realistic approach and build resilience in our kids.
First and foremost because exercise is very important for health reasons and for social reasons. So the most important factor in promoting exercise should be to make it fun for everyone and keep people in it. At best lifelong.
If you make it about winning and losing mostly than there will be winners and losers. And some people will be motivated by it and strive to get better.
And others will stop because they are consistently not good enough even if theoretically they enjoyed the exercise.
And the „children need to learn failure“- there are enough failures and hardships in real life without having to artificially create even more.
Knowing a lot of well adjusted and very friendly ten year olds with varies interests and a lot of grit, I cannot see the children you are talking about. But I remember myself hating exercise as a kid because I was not very fast, could not throw very wide etc. I am still not „good“ but I overcame my hatred of all kinds of sports (mostly because I had to because of health) and was surprised how much one can enjoy it. Regardless of wether one is talented or not.
I will never jump a double axel and will never win a skating competition but I enjoy every lesson on the ice. There is so much more to exercise than winning and it is sad that so many parents and coaches do not see the broader picture.