How to Instill Friendly
Competition in Children
Nobody likes
to lose – winning is fun, right? Instilling friendly competition into your
children is a good way to lead them down the path of being well-rounded
individuals. A healthy dose of competition doesn’t only have to apply to being
a better player in the sports arena; it can also apply to being a better
business owner, a better employee and a better person all around.
Healthy and
friendly competition can be the basis of motivating children to exceed expectations
– expectations that they may not feel they can beat. Many parents feel that
teaching children to be competitive because of the expectations some coaches
put on their players. Many experts
disagree, citing that this friendly competition taught at a young age teach
them to successfully compete in the world as teenagers and ultimately as
adults.
Again,
competition doesn’t just apply to sports. When children learn how to compete in
a friendly manner, they are learning to try the hardest. These same values will
carry over into life when they are competing for a new job or promotion. By
learning to compete as children, they are given a leg up on the competition who
may not have had that same experience.
Liken
teaching your children to compete to the gazelle and the lion: in Africa, when
a gazelle awakens each morning it is well aware that if it doesn’t wake up and
run it will be eaten by the lion. The lion on the other hand, knows that it
must be faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. The moral
of the story? It doesn’t matter if you’re the lion or the gazelle – each
morning wake up and be ready to run.