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First Posted: 2/6/2015

My son recently competed in a wrestling tournament and secured a second place win. I was thrilled. He was not. Apparently, his older brother’s mantra of: “If you’re not first, you’re last” has been imbedded into his partially developed teenage brain. He didn’t even look at his medal, so I wore it for the rest of the day. Because, unlike him, I’d be thrilled to be a second place winner in anything: motherhood, Scrabble, the art of taco building, life.

I don’t know where this thirst for first comes from. Sure, it’s commendable, but is it always realistic? No. His father and I are pretty non-competitive, so I doubt he feels any pressure from us to come out on top. We obviously feel strongly about hard work and all the accouterments that go with that – but we’ve never threatened him with waterboarding if he doesn’t secure first place. But it appears we’re in the minority.

There are two camps of sports parenting. There’s the parent who desperately needs their kid to achieve at all costs. These are the parents that harass the coaches, humiliate their children at sporting events and generally guarantee the child’s adult life will be filled with twice weekly therapist’s visits and a lifelong prescription for Xanax.

Then we have the parents who think their child deserves a big, fat trophy just for showing up. They want the child to be acknowledged for doing nothing but taking up air, and when they do decide to appear and don’t perform well, it’s the coaches fault, right? Um … no.

For me, my kid seems to put enough pressure on himself without my assistance, so I feel I can coast on the whole sports parenting thing.

In the olden days, when I “played” softball, (note the quotes, which illustrate my proficiency on the field), every child didn’t always get a chance to play, and that was fine. If we missed a practice or showed disrespect, we didn’t participate in the game and no one questioned it. Ever. Parents didn’t harass their children in public and would never have the audacity to question a coach’s authority or policies. Didn’t happen. Here is what happened: we played ball and we had fun. Period.

So, my son didn’t take first place. Boo hoo. I’m not saying he’s not as good as the wrestler who placed first, but guess what. He wasn’t that day. And that’s OK. That’s life. Not everyone can be first. It’s a lesson that needs to be taught while our children are still in diapers and lose at peek-a-boo. He needed to accept his medal with graciousness and congratulate the winner and really mean it.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the rules got skewed. We need to set them straight again. We need to teach our children that the laws of sports also apply to life: be courteous, be polite, be a big boy, take your rightful place on the podium, and don’t be a sore loser.

So, I gave him back his medal and told him to wear it with pride. I know I was proud when I wore it to the snack bar. Because for a minute, I felt like a winner, myself. The winner at eating the most hot dogs at a wrestling tournament… but still. He’s always a winner to me. In life and at wrestling.

But not at Scrabble.

That’s just me.