No Prize Included

When signing up my middle son for summer park and rec. activities, he was posed with a choice of t-ball, soccer or both. “Soccer,” he declared. “Okay, but not t-ball?” His father is the assistant coach for our high school’s varsity baseball team–and middle seemed to enjoy t-ball last year when he played. “Nope,” he explained, “you get a trophy for soccer. They don’t give trophies in t-ball.”

Oh. Yet when pressed, my son could not tell me where last year’s soccer trophy was. This exchange led me to thinking that we’ve raised the bar in a foolish and wasteful fashion. Kids expect a prize just for showing up. They get prizes in fast food meals, in boxes of cereal, at grocery store check-outs, at birthday parties for other people–I’ve even been to rummage sales where there’s a stash of grab bags full of crap waiting for customers under 12. When did it stop being enough just to participate? Why have we allowed this Pavlovian response to condition our children to the point where they’ll refuse to have fun because the reward at the end isn’t good enough?

I’m a mom who keeps a lot of prizes at bay–my kids never get the proffered tokens at our grocery store check-out or happy meal toys. I don’t give our kids gifts for minor holidays like Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day or Halloween. I want my kids to appreciate fun the old-fashioned way–it was enough to go to the amusement park for the afternoon, we don’t need to bring home a cheap plastic token on top of everything. I want it to be enough that they go to a birthday party and play games and eat cake–they don’t need a goodie bag sent home when they’re leaving the party. On family vacations we don’t stop in every shop hawking t-shirts and fudge–fun isn’t defined by what we buy or get, rather, fun is defined by what we do.

I have 3 sons under the age of 10 and they’ve already acquired a box full of trophies, plaques and medals–prizes handed to them by well-meaning adults who in their fervor to reward children for participating, cheapen their participation by rewarding it. It was enough for my sons to play on a well-groomed field for 8 weeks of summer under the watchful eye of volunteer coaches. It was enough for us to go for soft-serve ice cream cones after each game–to sit under the bluish cast of the streetlight and watch the stars come out. It was enough for them to run with their teammates for an hour each week, giggling and yelling.

This year I’ve proposed to our town’s park and rec. department that they forgo the prizes. Trophies mean nothing when they’re handed out so liberally and there are plenty of meaningful ways to recognize excellence when the time comes to do so. Free soft-serve ice cream cones will do JUST FINE.