Participation Rewards

Participation awards have become very popular since the 60s and have been introduced into many activities and sports. The purpose of these awards is to encourage youth to participate in activities and sports. Though participation awards are meant to encourage youth, they are having negative effects on the youth they are introduced to. Participation awards provide a false sense of accomplishment and can have harmful effects on the youth’s motivation and ability to lose.
In the first place, participation rewards are harmful to the youth’s motivation. Awards have, in the past, been a great way to give appreciation towards those who deserve recognition, but with the introduction of participation awards children no longer feel as if how hard they
According to Kim Skinner on KYA, “It’s a life lesson, how do you teach your children to be good winners and good losers if they don't win and lose? I feel sorry for kids that never learn disappointment. How will they handle life? Like not getting the job they wanted, etc.”. In other words, if children don’t have experience losing, it makes losing as an adult more difficult. Furthermore, Ashley Merryman in her paper Losing is Good for You states, “Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.” and she continues to build on his views with support, going on to explain that having experience in both winning and losing is much more important in a child’s developmental health. What kind of expectations will they have on the world? By telling children that they will be rewarded regardless of achievement correlates directly from a sports environment into a work and educational environment. These children will grow up believing that they deserve a rewarding future set up for them no matter what, where in reality they have to learn to work hard and strive for success
They give a false sense of success, leave unrealistic expectations in adulthood, and dwindle the motivations children have to do well in their sport. In order to solve this, we shouldn’t get rid of participation rewards altogether, but rather direct them to a more balanced and healthy cause. If we switch from handing out rewards for participation to rewarding good effort and deeds, kids will feel more successful, have proper expectations for life in a work environment, and furthermore, they will retain the motivation to strive for success even if it doesn’t mean coming in first. By implementing this new rewarding system, youth organizations across the globe with have healthier and more teamwork oriented sports and