Awards are given to recognize achievement and can act as a powerful motivator to encourage someone to excellence. But some are taking issue with some parents' efforts to make sure their children aren’t discouraged by not winning an award. They've said it seems that many children can now get an award just for participating in something -- even if their achievements aren't so stellar.
This nonstop recognition, according to Ashley Merryman, writer and author, doesn't inspire children to succeed, but instead can cause them to underachieve. She said the constant praise is meant to create safe space and ensure children won’t be afraid to fail. This works until they experience difficulty and once that happens they panic and have a hard time recovering from that failure, she said.
"Research shows that effort in working through difficulty has become stigmatized and kids tell us that they’d rather cheat or because then they know they succeed," said Merryman, who is the co-author of "Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing."
According to Merryman, parents and teachers instead should be teaching how to come back from a loss or failure and teach children persistence because most of them will lose more than they will win -- even if they’re good at something.
"If you’re good at it, then, you get promoted to the next level, and you meet other people who are better and the standards are raised. Now, you have a period where you will struggle again and it’s better to get used to this," said Merryman.
Using youth soccer as an example, she explained how teams can spend as much as 12 percent of their budget on trophies, which is twice as much as they spend on coaching clinics. She said she would rather see someone getting individual time and attention to children who might be feeling that they must be either an MVP or they are nothing.
"It’s more about giving kids the opportunity to grow rather than focus on the winning," she said.
