Two recent newspaper articles seem to give some answers to questions raised in several of my recent posts.
A couple of months ago I wondered about how to respond to my 4 1/2 year old grandson when he asked me if it was OK to lose at a game. A number of you wrote thoughtfully, either in the Comment section of the post, A Question From a 4 1/2 Year Old, or in an email to me.
Thanks to tips from readers HS and BT, I draw your attention to this article, Losing Is Good for You by Ashely Merryman. While the article focuses on the ‘folly’ of giving trophies to every one who participates in a game, a sport, it also speaks to the larger issue of praise, over praise, and what that does to kids. This issue has deservedly received a good deal of attention recently, and I find I am guilty of erring in this regard too.
The second article, A Season of Tough Lessons for the Nats, by Thomas Boswell, addresses not only the Nats but also all those of you (90+%) who predicted last year’s National League darlings would continue and perhaps do even better this year.
As is often the case in a Boswell article, he seems to nail not only the specific issue he is addressing, in this case, why the Nats failed to live up to expectations, but also has some good advice that goes beyond just the Nats and baseball in general.
Lydia said:
Here too is a brilliant article on the importance of letting a child learn to fail, as painful as it can be for a parent (or grandpapa) to watch.
How to Land Your Kid in Therapy, by Lori Gottlieb, from the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/308555/
Bob T said:
I too was struck by those the two articles by Ashley Merryman and Tom Boswell. They remind me of a recent study comparing US and Asian schoolchildren, where very young kids were given problems to solve that were basically impossible (I guess that’s kind of a nasty trick!). Asian kids worked away for the whole class period on the problems and US kids gave up after a few minutes. The point was that the Asian kids had learned to value working hard, not giving up, overcoming adversity, while the US kids (apparently) were looking for quick success. (Or maybe they saw through the researchers’ scam!)
I will look for the story on that one or maybe somebody will be able to say where it was.