Rewarding Children's Trophies

No one receives a trophy just for participating in life. Losing is a skill a child needs to learn and experience because it is apart of life. Rewarding children with trophies; whether winning, losing, participating, etc. can have a negative impact on a child. We give children too many trophies for many reasons. Opponents argue that coaches can use trophies as a way to acknowledge a player’s unique contribution and effort. Christine Carter; author, sociologist, and Uc Berkeley Greater Good Science Center said, “I can go either way on the trophies, the important thing is what is being communicated with the trophy (San Jose Mercury News).”
On the contrary, trophies make children feel like finishing in last place or just showing up is a good thing. Ashley Merryman, co-author of Top Dog: The Science of
A professor of American Studies at Brown University, Hilary Levey Friedman, said, “In most cases, this is going to go in the opposite direction. Someone is going to say, ‘Why didn’t my child get a trophy?’, and they don’t want the kids to be upset, they want people to come back… and so it just sort of becomes part of what’s expected” Some people believe that if a person constantly rewards a child, the child is spoiled and they do not build capacity to be strong in times of frustration (Evan Grossman). Merryman’s other concern is that trophies do not give children room to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. It is good to have children know they can make mistakes and move on. Sports should not be focused on making a career out of it. On the other hand, youth sports should be focused on children becoming passionate about playing the sport and being active with their friends (CNN). Therefore, children need to experience and learn from loss. Children nowadays are just given stuff for not doing much or really