Trophy Kids

I'm on my fifth kid, three of my own and two nephews. The youngest is 8 and the pressure is off. What a difference between my 8 year old nephew and my 24 year old daughter when she was his age. I know that when my daughter was little there was pressure for her to perform, whether it be in sports, academics, dance or popularity. Part of it was because of who she is, part of it was the society but a lot of it was because of who we expected her to be or who we expected her to become. Now, high expectations are not necessarily a bad thing if they encourage and help a kid to become all that is possible for them. But I know that too often I was pushing her because I felt it was a reflection on how good a parent I was.

Parenting, the ultimate sport; after all, we are competing with all those other parents out there to see who is the best. And if we do a really "good job" our kids will continue to push themselves even when we aren't there to "motivate" them. It seems to me that today it is even worse, kids are sometimes trophies for parents to display as an example of their parenting prowess. Are you competing in the parenting games, training one of yours to be a future medal winner? Before we answer too quickly, let's ask ourselves a few questions.

Do I find myself saying, "my son/daughter is better than him/her why are they ahead of him/her? Do I worry about what people will think of me if my child fails (if you just said to yourself, 'my child doesn't fail', you are definitely headed toward the games if not already training)? Do I find myself running my kids all over the place, spending tons of money on extra curricular activities that will give them "the edge" over their peers? There are bunch of other questions you might ask, in fact why not include them in a post following these remarks.

Certainly, our kids are extremely important too us, we love them tremendously, but we need to let them also enjoy life. Let them be kids, we should encourage them, but how much pressure should we put them under to always be the best? Maybe a better way for them to be happy and we as parents to be content is to encourage them to do "their" best and then be satisfied with that accomplishment.
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