6 Tips for Raising Non-Competitive Kids
Competition, according to author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, is defined as any situation where one person can succeed only when others fail. Kohn is convinced that we’ve all bought into dangerous myths about the value of competition in our personal lives, workplaces, society, and economic system. He laid out his arguments in his 1986 book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, and he’s been spreading the word ever since. He insists that competition is not human nature; it’s something we learn. “The message that competition is appropriate, desirable, required, and even unavoidable is drummed into us from nursery school” he writes. And according to Kohn, competition undermines self-esteem, destroys relationships, thwarts productivity, and discourages excellence. Here are six tips gleaned from his writings and talks, backed by hundreds of studies. { read more }
Be The Change
“Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity.” Martin Luther King Jr.’s perspective on healthy competition. { more } |
“I was six years old and in foster care. My foster mother was not the kind of person I would have chosen to stay with. One morning she sent me to the store for a sack of flour. On the walk back home I was doing what any six year old would have been doing — playing. Because of that I dropped the sack of flour and it burst open spilling the flour all over the ground. I knew that this meant I would be in big trouble when I got home. A driver saw the distress on my face and pulled over. He came over to me and asked what was wrong. I told him that I would probably get the beating of my life if I went back without the flour I had been sent for. He took me by the hand and led me back to the store where he bought me a new sack of flour – and some candy! Then he wiped my tears and sent me on my way home. I never told my foster mother about the kind gentleman but Iâm twenty-three years old now and I still remember him and his kindness.” –Hasifa
