Is your parenting aimed at producing the first place kid or the third place one in this picture?
I want to produce number 3 but, in all honesty, it doesn’t look like I’m going to achieve that. Neither N nor I are that person, so how can we teach what we ourselves aren’t?
“I want to produce number 3 but, in all honesty, it doesn’t look like I’m going to achieve that. ”
Well there are healthy alternatives to both the 1st and 3rd place kid – I would be off fooling around on my own doing my own thing (which almost never involved trying to find myself on a podium*) and maybe thinking ‘good for them!’ at the one’s on the podium…
*the one exception was in gymkhanas which my mother, brother and I competed in for a couple of years (when I was aroudn 9-12 years old I want to say). But any ribbons we won were a bonus – we went there mostly just to socialize and have fun
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But any ribbons we won were a bonus – we went there mostly just to socialize and have fun
Exactly! I raised children to compete if and ONLY IF they wanted to. No particularly strong praise if they won and no particular reaction if they did not.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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