Losing Isn't Winning

That's a completely different thing, isn't it.

Of course, kids (or adults) expressing that they are mad is perfectly healthy and not unreasonable if the child in this example really is playing against bigger kids.

What would be wrong with finding a more suitable league in this case?

I would focus on solving the problem rather then on getting on the kids case for expressing a perfectly reasonable emotion.

What the hell are you talking about? I'm not talking about calling anyone a loser or the loser. Who's talking about making anyone feel like a failure? My kids haven't succeeded at everything - good heavens, my daughter failed level 2 swimming when she was 7 THREE times and we just discussed if she wanted to continue. I couldn't care less if she learned to swim, as long as she wanted to go, I took her. When she didn't want to go anymore, we just went 'swimming' and forwent the lessons. it was her choice.

She also failed her driving test twice and nobody talked about anyone being a loser. Just discussed what she needed to work on then went out and practiced.

BUT, if she hadn't experienced losing earlier in her life, she might have had a major episode about the driving experience. We can't be good at everything, never mind 'the best', and it's better to learn that early and well.

Now her daughter is nearly 5 and experiencing the same swimming issues she faced and she laughs about it. "She comes by it honestly, mom!" kind of thing. None of us think granddaughter is a loser; she's still learning and it might not be her 'thing'.

I've something of a laissez faire competitive side - but to a large extent I've not personally been in a lot of competitions unless you count spelling bees. I still remember Ronnie Miller winning since he spelled engineer correctly after I screwed it up. In tennis, I preferred hitting the ball back and forth to keep it going, and didn't like the rigid structure of the actual game (though I enjoy watching it now). Only played golf with family, as a learner. With swimming, it was me I was competing with, same with running. On a2k sports games, I'm in it for renewing my interest in sports and don't give a damn re winning, but when I do well for a while, I get a kick out of it.

I used to follow sports for the stories, and still do - I guess I'm incorrigible.

On other than sports, it's really about if and how I can learn something. In painting shows, I've won some prizes, but didn't paint the thing for that reason - I painted it to see if I would like it, including like it or change it as I was doing it... process.

On the subject as Roberta described it, I agree with her. You won or lost a competition. That's it. In some competitions, you may have placed or showed.
No roses for second third or fourth, but sometimes there are different metallic cups or colored ribbons.

Competitions seems to be a wired in thing for humans, though it isn't always at the fore. Best to learn to deal with it.

Reminds me (tangent coming) -

in my advanced urban design class, my teacher asked me to be the one to enter the design competition for a redo of the perennially difficulty plagued Pershing Square in LA. While I was both working full time and taking classes like his in the evening and doing homework at 2 am, while married, keeping house, etc., I spent (I counted) at least 200 hours working on that. I liked my result. Of course I may have been asleep with open eyes when I thought that.

It turned out, mine would have been tossed right away, since the criteria the teacher gave me for the program turned out to be dead wrong.
The lesson - I should have researched the program myself. This was before the common use of computers to ferret out information, but still, I could have written or called.

Good lesson for later adventures in the new profession. I lost and learned at least one of the whys.

I remember well a lot of articles being written about the need for self esteem in children, with emphasis on this being a remedy for low progress. I could only guess when, as I'm not a parent or exceptionally heavily education oriented person. I'd guess eighties.

Soz would know.

Meantime, I haven't read all the last posts yet.

I was surprised by this, but apparently sports psychologists recognize those attributes as belonging to those who "have it". They are the ones back on the track next morning totally focussed on the next olympics.

I think you got it - it does teach the kids how to be a good loser and be able to honestly congratulate some one else. Yeah my daughtetr is better about it than me. My little one is just learning this - she played competitively the first time this past year. When her team lost in the playoffs she cried. I was shocked because my older girl never did that.

But I do think it is good for her - when she made the travel team (just barely) her team lost in the finals - second ain't really too bad - she handled that loss much better.

If you read what I wrote thoroughly you would have realized I was referrring to competitive sports and not learning leagues. In a learning league you learn how to play the game and the goal is get better and work on the game more than winning.

I've had my kids in both so I know the difference.

I think you explained well what I was saying - I've called my kids losers. We acknowledge they lost - but no parent would call them losers or consider them losers. I think this person is stretching what we are saying to fit their arguement.

And no sports is not directly related to work, but children bring what they learn to adulthood. And if they learn either in sports, school or through their parents that whatever they do they are rewarded and fantastic even when it is at something they are just ok - they will grow up believing they will be rewarded for just their ok work.

Last night on a cooking competition show, I saw:

The judges were wrong. I won.

and

I lost, but I won two friends.

First comment: The judges may have been wrong, but they are the judges. You lost.

Second comment: Spoken by a mensch.

I've been surprised at the strong reactions to this thread. Not at all what I expected.

If you enter a competition of any sort, you have put yourself in a situation where there will be one "winner." What you call the remaining competitors is meaningless to the extent that they can't be classified as "the winner."

It's unduly harsh to call those who have not won the competition "losers," (given the common definition of the term), but the fact remain that they did not win and so in the context of this one competition, they were the "losers."

If you enter a competition without the expectation of winning and yet do better than you expected, you didn't win and you're not the winner. You exceeded your expectations and so you may consider your performance a victory, but you are not the person who won.

In the absence of a tie, there is one and only one winner. If you don't think it's important to win, then you are not competing.

This doesn't mean that you should not engage in competitive activity, but if you are not trying to win, you are only fooling yourself (and perhaps your children) if you claim you "won" when you did not.

The problem isn't competition and winning, its people who enter competitions and insist that they deserve the title of winner...even when they don't win.

Usually there is only one winner and yet there are far more competitors. Competition requires participants to lose, but it doesn't require "losers."

If you enter competitions, expecting to lose but are happy for the activity, good for you. I would argue that once you expect to lose you will never win, but if you're OK with that, who really cares?

Where it grates is when people who don't really want to compete (because if they do and they don't win they will consider themselves losers) try and tell the rest of us that they won or are winners despite never having tried to win.

In the simple realm of artificial competition, the issue is not all that important. Winners know they won and everyone knows everyone else lost...no matter what they call themselves.

The problem comes in when you enter the real competitions within life.

If you think that coming in 5th is just as laudable as coming in 1st, it is likely that you will not strive to be 1st, because that is always tougher than accepting 5th place. Not a problem if the losers in real life competition accept that they lost, but there is a generation of kids who have entered the real world with the belief that coming in 5th is not less of an accomplishment than coming in 1st and who get outraged when the person who came in 1st reaps greater rewards than them.

Very few kids can win every competition they enter, and it's not the responsibility of their parents to make them feel good about losing those competitions they enter.

What parents should concentrate on is identifying the skills of their children and encouraging them to enter competitions based on such skills; which they have a reasonable chance of winning.

They should also concentrate on affirming with their kids that there are many benefits to competition and as long as they've tried as hard as they possibly could, they will never be "losers," although they may lose each and every contest.

The natural world is replete with winners and losers and the humans who have the most trouble with human competition, tend to consider natural competition sacrosanct. ironic, no?

Winners and losers are in a competative relationship... It is just like the economy... If the rich take all the fun out of the game by winning all the time, and winning it all, then they will also take the meaning out of it, and there will be no point in playing their game... The economy, if it will survive, must be an infinite game, and ours is not... Life too, is an infinite game, and one can lose many battles but win the war, which has the prize of a long, healthy, and meaningful life otherwise known as happy... We play to play, and if we want to compete then we do so for the relationship... If we are misers of encouragement and wish loneliness in our misery, then we run alone from the demons of our insecurity, and we have already lost... Expressed another way: That one running for something has already won, and that one running away from something has already lost...

This all makes me think some fuckwit came up with the word loser as general loser and it all elephantized.

There are several holes in your logic Finn.

1) There are plenty of athletes who competed without expecting to win. They had the attitude of just doing their best and many of them ended up winning first place.

2) Everyone knows the story of the Jamaican bobsled team in the 1988 winter Olympics. The fact is not only didn't they come in first, they didn't officially finish. I bet you can't name the first place winner that year without Googling it. The Jamaicans earned great applause because of their achievement and it was the Jamaicans who got the movie deal.

3) The "Kids these days" argument is as clichéd as it is false. People have been making this argument since the time of Ovid. And there is almost never any evidence the kids these days have any less character or work ethic than kids of earlier generations. It only feels true.

4) I get that it might "grate" on you that people might be enjoying themselves even though you are superior to them. But, that is your problem no theirs. The ability to enjoy yourself does make you a winner in the global game of living a good life.

I think you're an idiot who doesn't understand winning, losing, or parenting in the least.

"Only do something if you're the best" is a mantra for failure.

Ditto that.

Wow!

Such a thoughtful response.

And how intellectually dishonest of you to assign your fictional mantra to me.

If you want to assure your kids who do not win a competition that they are winners, go for it. I really don't care. In fact all the better for my kids and grandkids who might be competing with them.

When they are grown and competing in contests where there are meaningful outcomes, I'm sure they will feel content when they lose; they call Dad and he assures them they actually won.

It really is sad how easily wrong-thinking parents can pass their muddied thoughts on to their children.

But wait...you argue for a world wherein no one loses and everyone is a winner. Maybe if you keep voting for people like Obama such a world will exist long enough for your kids to profit from mediocrity. It won't last long though so you better time it right.

There are plenty of examples where those who were not rich "won" and became rich...without cheating.

It just doesn't fit your pseudo-revolutionary pap.

Calling someone who has lost a "loser" may be technically accurate, but substantively it's bullshit.

Anyone who competes is not a loser, even though they may not win.

The competitors should feel good about competing even if they do not win, but if they are true competitors, they will improve their game with the goal of eventually winning.

I reserve the term "loser" for those too scared or lazy to compete. And parents who tell their "loser" children that they are "winners" do them no service.

Half of a2k posters, a bright bunch, spell it as "loosing".

Which I figure is getting caught with some kind of lasso.