Competition is inevitable no matter what age you are. As young children, siblings compete for their parent's attention chronically and as we age, competition drives our motivations in school and work. In order to receive scholarships to get into college you must have a competitive edge compared to the other students competing for the same pool of money. Likewise, colleagues compete constantly to be the lucky recipient of a promotion. Even polite, reserved people compete to get their dream house or to have their child attend a good school. Competition happens on a daily basis throughout our entire lives in varying levels whether we realize it or not. To me it seems futile to try and banish such a deeply rooted human instinct, such as a competitive nature, when the real solution to competition-self-esteem issues in children should be focused more on balancing emphasis on competition than on competition itself.
As I said before, competition is part of the world we live in and it will remain that way forever; it is simply part of human nature to compete. Since we are ultimately not in control of competition in our culture, we can, however, monitor the level of competitive emphasis we place on certain activities at certain ages. Competition can be intimidating and fun at the same time, parents must be able to expose children to the fun that comes from competition before they can push them to uses competition as a self-improvement tool. Kids must find a reason to enjoy competition before they can take competitive levels into their own hands. I think that kids must learn how to share things before parents encourage competition. Kids are already competitive, so they need to understand both competition and sharing in order to understand the necessary balance between the two. As kids begin to get older and perhaps develop their own passions and areas of interest, I think that is the right time to push for competition because the kids are now focused on something they love, thus giving them passion and motivation to work hard and better themselves for their own benefit. Overall, parents must be able to teach and demonstrate a balance between fun and competition to their children. Competition is bound to happen, so the best thing we can do as a society is to strive to understand the balance of fun competition.
I agreed with every word, however, I think kids should compete at a very young age. In life people compete constantly, so why not make our kids learn at a young age?
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