How Childhood Became a Competitive Sport and It’s Hurting Our Kids
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From little-league to college admissions, everything’s become a competition, and our kids are losing the joy of just being kids.
Lake Crescent: The Pacific Northwest
I’m with the boys, my son and his scout patrol, all high school age, on a three day camping and hiking trip. These adventures are always a fun time and I love going. And now that the boys are older and more self sufficient, they pick up much of the work, setting up camp, cooking meals, cleaning equipment, etc. This gives me more time to relax, read, observe and just be in the moment.
Tonight’s dinner is Bratwurst and potatoes. Good old comfort food after a day of hiking to the top of Crescent falls, twelve and a half miles round trip. As the boys prep dinner, it’s inevitable that the conversation will turn to the usual high school subjects; farting, girls, which teachers are assholes and, dick jokes.
So I overhear this conversation as they prep the food:
“Mine’s bigger.”
“No way, look at the girth on this one.”
“You boiled yours, you loser. That doesn’t count.”
This wasn’t about anatomy.
This was about wieners. Hot dogs. Pure, unfiltered boyhood innuendo gross out humor. It’s dumb, harmless, and honestly, though I’d never let them see it pretty hilarious.
I’m not going to lecture them or tell them to grow up. I did the exact same thing with my buddies at their age. It reminds me of when I was young and everything was a game. That’s the beauty of being a kid. We’d compete over who could spit the farthest. Who could piss the farthest. Who could chug a can of soda and burp the alphabet. (Fact: most competitors can’t make it past the letter Q without hurling something back up.) And none of us cared about who won. Nobody remembers if Mikey Kaplan or Adam Funk pissed the farthest with the highest arc behind the bushes on the last hike. You could lose twenty rounds in a row and still be one of the gang. It was about laughing your face off. The competition was play. It wasn’t about beating anyone. It was just friends goofing around. Win or lose, you were still one of us.
That’s why I let them tell their dick jokes around a campfire grill. In their generation, every facet of their childhood is now part of a leaderboard. Grades aren’t about learning, they’re about class rank. Sports aren’t about fun, they’re about travel teams to earn scholarships. Kids don’t go to summer camp to roast marshmallows and see a night sky untouched by light pollution. They go to “Leadership Development Retreats” to pad their college essays. We replaced that wonderful, stupid joy and aimless play with tasks and measurable achievements. No wonder stress and anxiety levels among our kids are at an all time high.
The unfortunate truth is that we are raising a generation of exhausted, burnt out anxiety filled over achievers. Everything, from kindergarten to college, is a relentless competition: optimizing grades, padding the resume, nailing the travel soccer team, and curating an online brand. It’s all so serious, so future-focused, that it sucks the joy out of simply existing.
I see competition pushed on these kids every day.
A parent once told me, “Not every scout should reach Eagle. It cheapens the rank.” I felt sad for the kid, and for the parent, so insecure they need to block someone else’s achievement to feel better about their own.
Another parent, whose child is in my daughter’s AP class, once said, “AP kids shouldn’t hang out or study with non-AP kids. It discourages them.” Seriously? Basing friendships on GPA?
Student athletes are sorted into “D1 prospects” and “everyone else.” The idea of “one team” is dissolving. When I played football, it was for love of the game. Now, it’s all highlight reels and college scouts.
Some parents look down on community college or the trades as a post-high school path.
We’ve built a world where kids don’t try something unless the outcome is being at the top of the leaderboard. That’s not parenting. That’s pressure disguising itself as love.
But, let’s get back to the dumb stuff. Those dumb, pointless adolescent competitions are pure, authentic, and crucial. Who can eat the most Sour Patch Kids with out barfing, who can stay up the latest, who can fart the loudest; these aren’t meaningless challenges. They teach humor, living in the moment, emotional risk, humility, and human friendship. They learn to laugh through the embarrassment and move on. That’s where character comes from: getting roasted and laughing anyway.
As a parent, I have no interest in building the perfect kid. It doesn’t exist. I’d rather try to raise one who can fail, laugh, get back up and do it again and laugh again. I want them to be bad at things. At least they tried. I want them to lose occasionally. I want them to cook their own wieners, burn them and eat them anyway.
Because achievement doesn’t matter if you lose sight of the human connection you make while on the journey.
The real contest here isn’t about the biggest wiener. It’s about being comfortable enough to laugh and have a joke. And the truth is, the kids laughing hardest through the smoke is the kid who’s really winning.
DAD BOD WEEKLY 