I played volleyball in high school. My sophomore year I was on the Freshman-Sophomore team and received a trophy for Most Valuable Player. It was a big deal, one of only a couple trophies that I would ever receive while playing sports. I proudly displayed it in my room. It served as a constant reminder that hard work and teamwork pays off.
Fast-forward 20 years, I now have five kids that have all participated in various sports and programs. Every one of my children have received a participation trophy at some point. Whether it be for soccer, Cub Scouts, or basketball, we have them all. In fact, we have so many trophies that I have run out of places to put them. Through the years, I have come to notice that the more trophies they get the less excited and proud they are for getting them. They have come to expect a trophy or award now, whether they earned it or not.
I think society today has started a problem by perpetuating the need to reward everyone, for everything. When we lump everyone together, hard lessons have been overlooked for kids to learn. One hard lesson being that if you did not work as hard as your teammates, you do not get a trophy.
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"Origins of Narcissism in Children." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2015): 201420870. Web.) has shown that children whose parents overvalued them were more likely to develop narcissistic traits, such as superiority and entitlement- two qualities that are not necessarily going to benefit our kids when the going gets rough. (Wallace, Kelly. "Debate: Does Sports Participation Deserve a Trophy? - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 18 Aug. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015). Superiority and entitlement are definitely two traits that I do not want my kids to