In Life Children Have To Enjoy, Not Compete
Parents sometimes forget that children have to enjoy themselves, not compete. We sign them up for countless extracurricular activities plus the time they spend doing their homework. All this in order that the little ones are bright and stand out from the rest.
Being a child is not easy; it has its own complications and crises of this stage. In addition to the difficulties that this growth process itself has, adults are putting small stones in their path thinking that this way they will be better. We are wrong and we do not let them grow up as children.
Children have to enjoy, not compete
The goal that parents pursue is that our children are competent, with great skills and abilities that we believe will make life easier for them. We are wrong to force these learnings at such an early age. Children need to enjoy, live, play and, meanwhile, learn ; childhood is the time to be children.
A little one that we let enjoy will be a balanced, creative, spontaneous adult. Childhood is a stage of life in which many things are discovered, in which it is experienced, and it is not repeated.
Promoting competition among children is a mistake, because they have to enjoy, not compete. Parents should not end that childlike spirit that we all once had. A look free of prejudices, innocence that, unconsciously, we can end up overloading the boys. This process would no longer follow its natural rhythm, but we would force it to be something imposed: the competitive spirit and the stress it produces.
Enjoy, not compete: when we want children with a curriculum
It is clear that we cannot maintain that lifestyle until adulthood. As children grow, they acquire new responsibilities that are part of their maturation process. What happens today is that, every time, children stop being children much earlier: competition has entered the lives of the little ones too early.
We are in a society in which economic status seems the best predictor of happiness. For this reason, we parents strive that our children, from a young age, be competitive to be the best in the future.
But is this so? Are we not ending that beautiful stage that is childhood? It is important that we ask ourselves this. Children will grow up and have time to do their best, but we are going to let them enjoy childhood.
Children have to enjoy, not compete: parents who overindulge
More and more children are beginning to show signs of stress and even anxiety attacks. Homework, added to all the extracurricular classes to which they are targeted (English, piano, academy, etc.), make the little ones enter into tensions that do not correspond to their age.
Sometimes the symptoms of stress are not obvious to the naked eye and are interpreted as an indicator of the process of raising competitive children. We may observe boys between the ages of 5 and 12 who perform well in the different tasks they face, but in the long term, they can suffer serious stress problems if the pressure they are subjected to is too high.
They will be children with great curricula, but with a lack of living and enjoying childhood, being hidden by the imposed desire of the parents, which is interpreted as “something key for them to have a successful life.”
Fear of failure
Taking advantage of the time to be children is valued by these demanding parents as a time for rest and relaxation, to gain more strength for what they consider important: preparing bright children to enter a competitive world.
Some of these parents perceive as a failure that should not be shown when their child is not the best at something, or even go so far as to blame them for “not wanting to succeed. ” What is valued is the result in comparison with others, not the effort that the child has made to achieve that result. This, in the end, causes self-esteem to suffer and your stress and anxiety levels skyrocket.
As for the fact that children have to enjoy, not compete …
In short, and as we have been commenting, children have to enjoy themselves, not compete to be better. There are adults who still have childhood values, so why don’t we let the little ones enjoy this precious stage of childhood?
To achieve this, parents and people who take care of children must take another attitude and have other preferences that do not include competition as something basic to succeed when they are young. No one knows how to live life better than children; the moment of stress will come. Now let them live and enjoy, because there will be time to have responsibilities.
