Life is a battlefield and nothing ever falls from the sky. In our daily lives, competition is unavoidable, even if it involves a tiny, insignificant matter like fighting for a bus seat, we always need to compete with others for our own interests. This is a winners’ world and second place equals second rate. If you cannot grab the seat you get sore legs; if you cannot laud the job, you have to worry about your rent. Hence it is vital that we expose our children to competitive activities as soon as possible, so that they may not suffer in this harsh world.
Although reality may be firm, competitive activities can actually be fun. Sports, debating competitions, dancing and music all promote a healthy, benign competition that does not crush the innocence of young children but still teaches them valuable life lessons.
First of all, healthy competitive activities promote self confidence. Low self-esteem seems to plague a lot of Hong Kong youngsters nowadays, with many developing mental illness due to that. Healthy competition, or even if it is just racing other kids in the backyard, allows children to socialize and establish their status within a social circle. In this way, self-confidence can be boosted and the chances of mental illness minimized. After all, self-confidence is not ingrained, it has to be developed and it is better when they are young and still carefree. That way, when children get older and life starts throwing adversities into their laps, they will have the psychological soundness to deal with them.
Secondly, healthy competitive activities can help us to understand our personal strengths and weaknesses. For instance, through a volleyball match or a solo singing competition, we learn which positions we are good at or which notes we can hit and which will make us sound squeaky. Thus we can learn to develop our talents and accept our shortcomings. This is an especially important ability for children to acquire because we nee to make tough choices in life that require us to know ourselves well. In Form 3 going to Form 4, we need to decide whether we want to be in the arts, science or commercial stream. In Form 7, we must decide on our universities and majors. The students under the new “334” system have it even worse. They are required to choose from more than 10 different subjects while still in Form 3; many of them only have a vague idea about their preferences and thus feel completely bewildered with the choices. These problems cannot be solved by several hours of career tutorial. Thus through involving children in healthy competitions, they can get to know themselves at an early age, saving them a lot of head-scratching and fingernail biting as they grow up.
Last but not least, through healthy competitions, children can develop a sense of hard-headed realism without being too dampened by the harshness of our society. A lot of kids nowadays are like dainty greenhouse plants. Their parents provide them with all the material needs and love as they grow up. The kids are used to having everything handed to them. This phenomenon is not going to go away with the rapid rise of nuclear families. The times when each family had 5 or 6 kids are over; most parents have 1 or 2 if at all. Thus parents will treasure their children all the more and practically read their kids’ wishes from their minds. It is, of course, a parent’s natural responsibility to provide the best for their children, but there is a line between that and treating them like emperors. If healthy competition is introduced to kids, they can learn that most things in life have to be earned through sweat and tears. This will prevent them from growing up spoiled and become diligent members of our society. Also, healthy competition has to be stressed to develop a positive outlook of life in children. We do not want to crush their vivacious spirits by telling them about inflation and unemployment.
A childhood rhyme goes “Winners, keepers; losers, weepers.” This holds true as kids grow up. We often need to face competition from people who are smarter than us, make tough decisions that may affect the rest of our lives and face the merciless reality. Healthy competition can help children deal with all three areas in a positive way and it is never too early to start.