COMPETITION

I was taught that competitive sports prepare a child for life as an adult.  But is that really what we want to be teaching our children?  My nine-year-old son decided he wanted to play basketball this last season.  Although only nine, he was starting late in life.  The rest of the kids on his team had been playing for four to five years.  We were fortunate that he got on a good team with a good coach.  They won the championship against a very good team; the only team that had beaten them during the season.  During the championship game, I noticed we parents were cheering every time the other team made a mistake.  Some of the parents were even trying to jinx players on the other team when they tried to make a basket.  We weren’t just cheering for our children’s successes, but also for the other team’s losses, failures, and mistakes.  My son’s team won, which meant the children on the other team lost.  Our children were elated.  The children on the other team were heartbroken.  It looks like what I was taught is correct.  It is the same as adult life.  In the search for a job, one applicant is chosen, the rest are not.  Climbing the ladder of success, there are only so many positions to be filled and only one at the top.  Only one company can be chosen for the job.  And, what about war, winners live and losers die.  The same is true in nature; survival of the fittest.  Competition, winning and losing, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, appears to be the natural order of things in this world.  But a parent hoping a child on the other team fails and cheering that failure, just seemed wrong.