Should Children be Sheltered from Loss?

Too much pressure on kids to perform well is, without a doubt, unhealthy (there are some youngsters who improve and thrive under pressure, but I think this can be attributed in part to effective parenting). However, does this pressure really stem from the fact that there is a winner and there is a loser? I do not believe so. While the increasingly popular trend to say "everyone's a winner" mitigates some of the negative aspects of excessively competitive sports, the real culprit of this issue lies in the culture of winning and losing. Losing does not mean you have failed because no matter how badly you did, you can always learn from your past experiences. I'm not saying that everyone's a winner, it's obvious that the person who lost is still the loser. However, loss can be an even more effective teacher than success, and as a society, we need to learn how to maximize the positive side of a failure. Parents often get way too invested in their kid's scoresheet, and fail to teach their children the more important result of games: experience. Some parents even go to extremes and show children the ugly side of competition, as this article by the Washington Times details. In the end, the lack of a scoresheet is harmful to the development of children because it negates failure, a core aspect of life that should be learned sooner rather than later.

Additionally, without failure, we can't know what true success is. If winning and losing are equivalent, what's the point of putting in more work to win? If I could win the Olympics just by "giving it my all", what's the point of improving? The reality is, improvements cannot be made without failure. There is a plethora of inspiring quotes about failure (with irrelevant background pictures) and as cliche as they may be, they are often very true.

Are we raising a generation of wimps by coddling and refusing to let them experience the pain of failure? In some ways, yes. If not wimps, we're raising a bunch of sniveling, snobby sore-losers. [Side note: I may sound especially critical because I don't have an iota of respect to spare for sore losers.] I remember reading an article some time ago (a month, perhaps?) about losing with grace, and after a quick minute of using Google, I found it here. Even though I enjoyed the article and think it offers many good points, I find it somewhat disconcerting that it was posted in "The Art of Manliness". Losing with dignity is a principle that applies to everyone and should be ingrained in children from a young age, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or class.