My son has the fastest Chameleon in the land, its green with shimmering red and blue bands. Similarly his younger brother owns the fastest land based flounder ever, its red and black, with a gold skeleton. These beasts don’t quite conger thoughts of speed for most of us. For my boys, these lower vertebrates are the very embodiment of speed. They chose them as the basis for their Pinewood derby cars. I was proud of my boys for stoically picking up, and racing the only animal themed cars in the troop, they unabashedly raced faster looking cars, and often won.
Lesson: Do your own thing, Stand Strong, Innovate rather than follow.
What strikes me about the race was the conflicting messages the kids received. A race is by definition a contest to see who is best, but they were regularly reminded to cheer for everyone, “we are all winners” “If you had fun you won.” No! If you won, you won; if you lost you lost, hopefully you had fun regardless. The idea is to build a car and beat other cars and win, it isn’t just part of the American mantra, it’s a theme etched into the very psyche and genetic code of boys. We don’t race to tie, we race to victory. Victory means someone lost. We want them to be fast, we want them to be the best, they want to win, but then we encourage them to be nice about it….something doesn’t add up.
What we should be saying is play to win, be prepared to lose, accept whichever outcome graciously. (In my book an end-zone dance is gracious, punching the guy who beat you is not)
I see that it is a hard line to walk balancing grace with victory, especially with kids. No one wants to see a shattered kid weep over a lost pinewood race, rather we want to see a kid beam with pride. Instead of teaching the kids how to handle disappointment, the scouts were admonished for showing pride or support for the winner. Ridiculous. We should not tame the winner, in the hopes of buoying the looser. Let’s hold the winner high as an example and give kids a role model from within their ranks. Build pride, by building a challenge. Kids are perceptive, they can spot a stranger looking at them from 100 yards, and know a hollow victory, if everyone wins there is no pride.
In life you win and lose, some people win all the time, others lose all the time, the rest of us have to learn how to recuperate after defeat and continue to push for the next opportunity to win. (I had a professor who called tests “an opportunity to demonstrate subject mastery”. I hated it at the time but think it is a great way to look at a challenge.)
As a society we are softening, we are sheltering our kids from the reality that you can’t win everything, they don’t know how to lose. Video games just allow you to restart from where you began….not a great lesson. Everyone gets a trophy, ok the trophy is small and meaningless. “We are all beautiful on the inside”….crap; guts are ugly, evil is internal, and people run the gamut from perfection to putrid.
It is important for kids to know how to lose, to know that losing one race is not the end of life, to use what they learned from the loss to help them become prepared for the next challenge. I’m not condoning the idea of teaching our kids to lose, or promoting that losing is ok, or even the idea of reducing goals to ensure success. These ideas all suck. It’s a recipe for an underachiever. Teach the kid to win, strive to win, want to win, enjoy winning, set big goals and work to beat them. But also teach them how to handle a loss. How to accept it, pick up the pieces and move on…..and if that means fighting again, now you’re a bit more ready.
The Chameleon came in second, my son was disappointed, frankly I was not. He needed the lesson, and handled it well. He built a fast car, raced well, and lost. I am proud of how he accepted it, congratulated and admired his friend’s car, and I’m proud that already he is discussing a new design for next year.
Lesson: You learn more from a loss than a win, but winning feels good.
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