28 January 2025
Shaping individual competitiveness in children
— My Story
Is there anything cuter than a Gr 1 learner running the 100m? The joy, the effort, the face!
Braving the South African heat I’ve attended more athletics events over the past few weeks than what was actually necessary. I originally planned to only support my Matric son’s last Interhouse meet, but a few days later the war cries from the local Girl School piqued my curiosity and I eventually ended up at the local Primary School ‘colour-sport’ event too, just for a bit of nostalgia. My son is leaving the nest soon. Don’t judge.
The topic of competitiveness has been raised by our Tribe’s parents a number of times over the past 4 years. Is competition a good thing?
Should children be “pitted against each other”?
Is it healthy to measure yourself by looking at someone else's progress?
Isn't Primary School the place where young children should enjoy learning and growing by just taking part and having fun?
I’ve stumbled across an interesting research article on Individual Competitiveness.
Right off the bat a distinction is made:
“Competition is a market condition, whereas competitiveness is about the ability to create competitive advantage.”
When I separate these two concepts - competition and competitiveness - it helps me to distinguish between a nasty ‘beat-you-to-the-top’ culture as opposed to a concept of nurturing personal aspiration.
For our children to thrive in their future, they need a level of individual competitiveness. This means demonstrating self-competence, mastery, achievement and self-improvement. The easiest way to do this is in a pool of peers.
So how can parents and teachers inspire this growth without breaking their spirit?
1. Discipline
Just reading this word might make the hairs on your neck stand up straight. I know. When we read ‘discipline’ we read ‘strict’, ‘rigid’, ‘punishment’. But according to the above mentioned study, it is personal discipline that is the most influential factor for competitiveness. If we can help our children show up on their own, push through discomfort by themselves and honour their own goals, it will be an investment for a lifetime.
Schools can help nurture personal discipline too. Interestingly, according to this study, discipline in Primary school is more effective than discipline in Secondary school.
In other words, for a school to help in the nurturing of healthy competitiveness, they need to value, encourage and reward discipline. What does this look like?
If the star player is always late, the timely player gets the spot. If the A candidate never turns in homework on time, the disciplined student gets the top spot in class.
Too often schools show that they value individual achievement far more than individual discipline. A school’s success becomes about the number of distinctions, the number of top athletes, the national recognition.
2. Parental expectation
Another driver for personal competitiveness is parental expectation. To be honest, when I first read that this was one of the key results of this study, I cringed a little. I loath seeing parents next to a sports field with an invisible whip edging their children on. More often than not it is ugly, belittling and a sure way to foster resentment and rebellion. Their unrealistic expectations drive their encouragement.
So what does healthy expectation look like?
The Pygmalion theory, otherwise known a s the Rosendal effect, comes into play here. The Pygmalion effect refers to situations where high expectations lead to improved performance and low expectations lead to worsened performance. The underlying idea is that when a leader, authority figure, or role model believes we can succeed in a certain area, we will work hard to meet their expectations. This also implies that we do better when more is expected of us.
We do however need to have a balanced, realistic view of our child’s potential. This is difficult especially when we are looking at them through lenses tinted with intense love, dreams and high hopes.
Angela Duckworth suggests in her book ‘Grit’ that children choose their own aspirations. Our ‘parental expectation’ then shifts from our own goals for them, to that which they have committed to themselves. And we keep them accountable.
But this theory also shows that behaviour influences behaviour. For example: if a parent does not value and promote study-time at home, a child is most likely not going to value studying.
If a parent continuously drops their child 10 min late for practice, that value of tardiness is adopted by the child.
Parents can therefore create a system at home and a culture in their family where self discipline is modeled and encouraged.
3. Extra curricular activities
Numerous studies such as the National Education Longitudinal Study and the Longitudinal Study of American Youth of 1988 have shown that involvement outside school, such as sport and music, elevates academic achievement. But how does that give my child a healthy competitive edge?
When children are educated in a bubble, they are only exposed to their own efforts and achievements. I remember that I was so impressed with myself as a young gymnast when I finally, after months of practice, succeeded in doing a short tumble routine. We were a small club and I didn’t have any competitors. My ballet-trained friend joined the club that week, and successfully did the exact tumble routine within a day.
That made me want to be better. I didn’t necessarily want to beat her, but I realised I’ve expected a certain level of myself and I wanted to expect more of myself.
Being surrounded by peers attempting a goal encourages a healthy competitive spirit.
When a team relies on you to show up and do the work, discipline increases.
When hours of practice pays off in a flawless recital, the joy encourages us to grow some more.
I look at my two children and I conclude that as a parent I should shift my view of competitiveness to the ‘self’. To encourage them to expect more of themselves, to show up for themselves. To push themselves. I hope that they will not look at others to compare, but to be inspired. May they compete in order to grow.
The Gr 1 100m runner hugged his friend in the lane next to him with such force they fell to the ground in a fit of laughter. They made it all the way to the line. They won.
(Milan Murray is the founder of The My Story Tribe and a mother of two.)