“So what, you wanna chip closest to the orange flag?” “Yeah that’s good”. I was the one who chipped it closer and my brother gave me a little look like he’s going to come back with a better shot than mine. One of my favorite things to do with some spare time is going to the driving range with my brother Jerry. He recently got me into the game of golf this past summer and it was one of the best discoveries for me, even though things can get really frustrating sometimes.
When kids are first growing up, they have many mistakes and lessons to learn. Getting your kids involved with some sort of competition will help with particular lessons and build their personality. Without competition, there would be fewer goals and less motivation to improve.
Ashley Merryman, author of “Losing is Good for You” as well as other books on competition expresses that “If children know they will automatically get an award, what is the impetus for improvement? Why bother learning problem-solving skills, when there are never obstacles to begin with?” (Text 1) When your kid knows they’re going to get rewarded at the end no matter what, it will stop the development of their skills to have drive and determination to push themselves. When I play golf with my brother I always push myself to be better than him on every shot. Even though it’s not an actual professionally ruled game, we still compete against one another to see who gets the bragging rights.
For example, if your son is on a baseball team. If he knows that they are going to get a trophy at the end of the season even if they didn’t do their best, he will tend to not practice and want to get better. He’ll grow up to know that if he just floats above the water he will still get rewarded in the end which is not the case. At some point competition will make your kid realize that they have something to work toward or else they will be left behind. If your kid’s
teammates are working to get better but your kid isn’t, you will notice that they won’t be as good as everyone else.
Competition can encourage kids to test their skills under pressure and to understand mistakes and make improvements. When you are put into a game, you have a job to help contribute to the team. If some of the kids on the team aren’t contributing like they should be, it can weigh the team down and put them in a poor position. This is one of the reasons why competition is good for developing problem solving skills. If your kid isn’t doing good and they are affecting the team negatively, they will learn that if they play better or harder, it will put their team one step closer to winning.
Matt Richtel, author of “The Competing Views on Competition” as well as a health and science reporter for The New York Times says that “The greatest players he has known and played against”…”are problem solvers. When they played against other greats, they relish the challenge of solving a difficult problem. Winning or losing is simply a measure of whether or not they have solved the problem” (Text 4).
As your kids grow older, you are going to want them to have a good sense of how to deal with a problem and what approach to take with it. Competition will put them in the position where they will need to know what the next play is for the team or how to approach the next play best. When me and Jerry go golfing and I accidentally shank a ball, I know my next shot is going to be a challenge because I need to put myself back in a good position. Competition teaches kids to attack challenges head on using the best of their ability to see if they have what it takes to succeed. The results of this will let them know if they are performing well or need to put more work in to be better.
Temma Ehrenfeld, author of “How Competitions Are Good for Kids” as well as a psychology and health journalist states that
“Seeing mistakes or failures as an opportunity to learn and improve is a valuable skill in many areas of life. Competitions make this concrete. They provide benchmarks. If you lose one game, you come back to play another round differently” (Text 6)
You would be better off getting your kid involved with competition early so that they are comfortable with the competitive fields and grow to have competitive traits when they are older. This will help them when they are older as they will try to be best at their job and help with constant improvement. An example of this would be my dad. My dad did many sports when he was younger including football, wrestling, and lacrosse which all contributed to the person he is today. Now, my dad has been involved with the culinary at delta sky club for the past few years. He originally started off at the one sky club at Laguardia in Queens, New York. Just this past week, he was promoted to run most of the sky clubs on the east coast.
The amount of ways competition can and will affect your life is countless. I include the “will” in that because everything in life comes with some kind of journey or work process. Believe it or not, even parents still face competition whether it’s at their job, at their homes, or some other place.
Nothing is just given to you for free in life without doing any hard work. With hard work comes competition.