Your Kids Are Soft Enough

I recently sat down to watch the news and saw a report that made me want to vomit. It was a soft feel good story on how some little leagues are not keeping score and the story was slanted to show just what a good idea this was. You see because we are such pussies and we have to raise these wimpy ass kids, we can’t have winners and losers. So, lets just have fun and than everyone wins. What a bunch of bullshit.

This trend is just further proof of how screwed up our thinking is in the country. When you play a game someone wins and inevitably someone loses. Dealing with failure and being a gracious loser are qualities that are important to learn at an early age. No one wins all the time and so when these kids become teenagers and all their life they have been sheltered from losing, when that inevitable first loss comes be it in Little League, Soccer or Tidily Winks just how do you think that young adult is going to react? Exactly, like a spoiled soft little brat.

And, I blame the parents for that. I understand the concept of parents not wanting their kids to grow up to fast. You want your child to remain a child for as long as possible. You want to shield a kid from failure, as it is a paternal instinct. But by doing so I believe parents are doing more harm than good. No one wants to see his or her kid strike out or make an error. This is why soccer is so popular with kids now anyway. You see in soccer there is no failure. You kick a ball and run after it. Who can’t do that? The most un-athletic kids on earth can kick a ball. It takes actual talent to hit a pitched ball with a bat. So, these yuppie parents all shelter their kids from failure until it is too late. As these trends continue we will continue to march toward a society of kids who cannot handle or deal with failure.

And please save me the, you don’t have kid argument crap. I don’t direct movies but I can have an opinion on them can’t I. I was a kid once, and I played little league and damn it I lost a lot of games. I made some errors as well. Losing sucks, but I learned to deal with it. On top of all of that by realizing at an early age that losing sucked, I learned to try not to lose. So, I became competitive, maybe some may say a little to completive. But, let me the first to day that competitiveness has benefited me many times. In the work force you compete all the time with your co-workers. By striving to win you inevitably do a better job and therefore get more recognition.

So, America please wake up and stop this ridicules practice. Let’s keep score, lets not have everyone gets a trophy day, and I say we skip the bumper bowling as well. Not succeeding in everything you do, as a kid is not necessarily a bad thing. Also, I don’t want the next generation to not be able to handle failure. We already have done enough damage to them by burdening them with an environment we destroyed, gas prices which will be around five bucks a gallon and a deficit in the trillions. If we want the next generation to be able to take are of us we need to make them stronger not weaker. They will certainly need to be able to handle world problems a lot better than my generation has.