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I know what you mean. How old is your daughter? Sorry if you said, and I missed it. My son is almost 7 and has a trophy for every season of baseball and soccer so far. I hear they stop this at a certain age. I'm not sure when. The baseball coach decided to get team shirts this year instead, so maybe we're getting there.
She's 8. I know it goes on for quite a few years. Maybe it stops later in sports, but then we get to the whole "everybody gets an A" attitude in school.
Or even college where professors talk of calls from parents complaining when little Taylor gets a C which she was lucky to get because she only showed up to half the classes.......
Or the boss whose charming employee asks for a promotion for arriving on time for a whole 3 months..........
Also what are you supposed to do with all those trophies. After 4 years of bowling we had like 15 trophies between "participation" and "age group" for 2 kids. I didn't really expect my mom to keep all of them. the only one I really cared about was the one for bowling over 200.
Yes I was on a bowling team. And I highly recommend it for a child who maybe isn't the most athletic.
This was never about winning or losing and not receiving a trophy, but rather about receiving a trophy for simply participating in a sport. I mean, really, who cares!? However, since it is so important to you, Alanboy, you should make your feelings clear to the coach on any sporting team your child participates in, to ensure that your child does not receive a trophy, if they are distributed for simply participating, so your child will "learn his lesson early in life".
If you really believe in the practice, why not actually defend it rather than insist that other peoples kids should be delibrately ostracized from their peers? Or why not suggest that parents who want the trophy go out and buy their own and do their own presentations rather than force the group to go along? And if you don't care, why confront those who do?
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Originally Posted by twins4lynn
My kids never cared that much, either, when receiving a participation trophy. They received their trophy, looked at it, put it down and moved on to doing something else. Maybe others have different experiences.
Making my point, though you don't realize it. The kids eventually realize the trophies have no value and they are left with absolutely no sense of achievement or anything to strive for.
I'm not that old and there were not trophies for anyone who didn't earn one all the years I was growing up.
Even Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have fallen into that frame of mind that the fragile self esteem must be protected at all costs. My daughter was in Brownies and badges were handed out like candy. They didn't have to earn any of them.
My father used to be a scout leader and my brother made it to Eagle Scout. I remember him working like crazy to earn his badges. My father couldn't be the witness or test him because of the family relationship. It had to be someone else, so my brother had to know his stuff. He didn't make the knots on his first few tries because of the timing, but he sat at home and worked on them, studying the book, and he finally got his badge. He was pretty proud having earned it.
You can't compare Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. They're not organized alike, and they're not intended to be same-thing-different-gonads.
Brownie Scout badges are called "Try Its" for a reason. The girls are given patches for their sash/vest for trying an activity. It isn't intended to be a mastery reward because mastery isn't something expected from that level of development. When a girl moves up to Juniors, the bar is raised for project completion, and again at Cadet and Senior levels.
The whole GSUSA organization is intended to progress with the girl, and has been for years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoExcuses
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There used to be tryouts for little league and sports at school. If you weren't good enough, you weren't on the team. Simple. You either worked harder the next year, or found something else to do. Heck, Michael Jordan didn't make the cut for high school basketball.
There still are tryouts for competition teams like AAU. Most areas have two levels of teams-- one for the kids who are serious competitors and are looking at college recruitment, and then rec teams for kids who just want to play, no matter how mediocre they are. The problem there comes when AAU class players play rec, and their parents get frustrated with the lower level of play (and obnoxious about it, or about the fact that the coach plays everybody and not just their "star") or teams on the AAU level take kids who aren't that good (and the parents get obnoxious about it).
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