My daughter was excited to participate in a Reading Challenge competition this morning, and their all-girls team won. My husband was there and shared the news that another school team that lost to my daughter’s team was given a free pass to continue to finals. Their team captain (a kid) protested the loss by claiming they didn’t hear the question when losing in the final round, even though the question was repeated.
My 10-year old daughter had just wished the team good luck in their lightening round before her team competed against them.
And this is their response to good sportshumanship? Or in this case, sportskidship?
Instead of my irritation, I should just be celebrating my daughter’s graciousness as a competitor, and celebrating her team’s win because their hard work paid off.
And yet… for the moderator who gave the losing team a free pass, and for the children who didn’t get to experience loss, and for my daughter’s team who legitimately won, and now think that team is a bunch of cheaters… I am starting to believe that we are not teaching real empathy. We are removing learning opportunities from children by rescuing them, and not allowing them to lose and feel pain (in safe environments) so they can know and understand healthy degrees of pain and suffering when they experience it. From there, we could help them through it and teach them to self manage it each time.
How on earth can our children even begin to understand the world and how complex it is if they are protected from its sharp edges? How can we teach our children resilience when we live in times that can be extraordinarily frightening around the globe? How do they learn to armor up, when they don’t even know what loss feels or looks like?
So that’s why I was upset. And I guess I am, still!
Your mission to achieve Superhumanness: Teach empathy to every generation. Facilitate experiences that lead to understanding what failure means. The more you allow yourself to face failure, the higher your empathy.
Let all children experience loss as great as their wins in a safe environment. And teach a generation of future empaths.
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