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Why Children Should Not Be Allowed In Sports

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David McCullough once said, “If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.” Participation trophies were introduced to society in the early 1920s to reward kids not for ability but merely for participation in sports. Over time, participation trophies have been found to have positive and negative effects on children. Today, the world is in a debate over whether or not kids should receive these trophies. Children should not receive participation trophies in sports because it kills kids' sense of competition, children will not learn how to accept failure, and it can cause children to act narcissistically. The first reason children should not receive participation trophies is because it kills a kid's …show more content…

Losing is an opportunity that children can use to work harder to win next time.”(“The Participation Trophy Debate”). Gem Awards corroborates the idea that, if every kid feels as if they are the winner of receiving a trophy, they will not work as hard to improve themselves. This can also play into later in life when it comes to getting jobs and much more, if they never learned to work hard for their goals as a kid they could struggle to achieve their goals as adults. Therefore, receiving participation trophies can not only affect kids in the short run, but it can also affect them long term. Another reason children should not receive participation trophies is that they will not learn how to accept failure. As mentioned by the author of EuroKids, “When they get to college/work and struggle, they are more likely to give up than dig in. They are more likely to blame their professor/boss instead of looking inside themselves. Why do you need to be a member? Because they have always been told that they are special.”(“Exploring The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Participation Trophies”). With their quote, EuroKids shows that if kids do not learn to accept failure from a young age, they could face many hardships as …show more content…

It helps them to become confident and have increased self-esteem in the things they pursue.”(“The Participation Trophy Debate”). Although this may be true, over-rewarding kids for small victories can lead to narcissism later in life. Ashley Merryman, a New York Times author, agrees when she writes,” Kids with already high self-esteem see the trophies as vindication they really are as wonderful as they see themselves. In a longitudinal study, when parents regularly overpraised their children’s performances, their children were more likely to be narcissistic two years later.” (Merryman). In Merryman’s writing, she expresses the point that feeding into children's already high self-esteem makes it more likely for those children to grow up to be narcissistic and self-centered. In brief, children should not be receiving participation trophies because it can kill their sense of competition, they will not learn how to accept failure, and it can cause them to act narcissistically when they grow

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