Why Are Parents More Competitive Than Their Kids These Days? A Teacher’s Perspective + Practical Tips
Last Saturday I stood on the muddy sideline of my 8-year-old’s rec soccer game, holding a bag of goldfish crackers and watching a familiar scene play out. Ten minutes into the first half, 8-year-old Javi chased a stray pass, got his feet tangled, and accidentally booted the ball into his own team’s net. The other team cheered. Javi paused, wiped mud off his cheek, and grinned before trotting back to position.
His mom, standing 10 feet away from me, didn’t grin. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled so loud the wind carried it across the whole field: “Javi, what were you thinking? Keep your foot pointed forward! That’s the third mistake this half!”
Javi didn’t even look over. After the final whistle blew, he ran straight for the snack table, grabbed a blue popsicle, and started playing tag with the 10-year-old who’d scored the winning goal for the opposite team. His mom followed, still pink in the cheeks, and pulled him aside to rehash the own goal for three minutes while he stared at the dripping popsicle in his hand.
I’ve seen this same dynamic play out a hundred times, both as a 3rd grade teacher and as a mom. Last month at our school’s annual science fair, a 9-year-old named Milo spent 10 minutes showing a judge his baking soda volcano, pointing out the hand-drawn dinosaur stickers he’d added to the base and explaining how the red vinegar had bubbled over onto his dad’s laptop keyboard the night before. By the time judging ended, Milo was already over by the cookie table, covered in sprinkles, while his dad cornered the PTA mom in charge of awards to ask why the volcano didn’t place higher. Milo didn’t even know they gave out trophies until an hour later. He just wanted to show people his volcano.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been that parent. Six months ago, my 10-year-old daughter did her first piano recital. She messed up the middle eight bars of her song, laughed mid-performance, and kept going until the end. I sat in the audience, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it over the piano, replaying the week before when I’d nagged her to practice that section every night. I was furious, already thinking about how we’d need to double practice time before the next recital. When she ran off stage to find me, the first thing she said was “That was fun! Can we get mint chocolate chip ice cream after?”
That’s when it hit me: my daughter didn’t care about a perfect performance. She cared about the ice cream, and the fact that she got to stand up in front of a room full of people and play the song she liked. I was the only one carrying all the weight of competition.
It’s easy to blame parents for being too wound up, but I don’t think it’s that simple. Most of us grew up hearing that every small achievement builds on the last: a good recital leads to a better chair in the orchestra, a spot on the travel team leads to a varsity letter, a science fair award leads to a better college application. We carry the weight of that long game every time we watch our kid step onto the field or the stage. Our kids don’t see that long game yet. All they see is right now: right now they get to run around with their friends, right now they get a popsicle or a cookie or ice cream after, right now their volcano actually bubbled the way it was supposed to. We’re competing for a future that only exists in our heads. Sometimes we’re even making up for old regrets we never got to resolve, like the soccer spot we lost to an injury, or the recital we messed up that still nags at us 30 years later. Our kids didn’t ask to carry that.
I’ve tried a few small things over the last year that have helped me pull back, and I’ve shared them with other parents who’ve said it works for them too. The first is the 10-minute rule: after any game, recital, or competition, you don’t talk about performance for the first 10 minutes you’re in the car together. You just talk about whatever they want to talk about. After that piano recital, I didn’t mention the mistake. I just said “Mint chocolate chip it is” and let her talk about how the girl before her had a sparkly dress covered in sequins. By the time we got to the ice cream shop, my own anger had faded, and I didn’t even want to bring up the mistake.
The second is to write the original reason your kid signed up for the activity on a sticky note in your phone. For my daughter’s piano lessons, it says “She wanted to learn the theme from My Neighbor Totoro to play for Grandma.” When I feel that competitive twinge pop up before a recital, I pull it up and it reminds me this isn’t my competition. It’s her activity, for her reason.
If I do slip up and get too caught up, I just say it out loud: “I’m sorry I got worked up about that. This is your thing, not mine.” It doesn’t fix anything overnight, but it lets them know the pressure isn’t on them to make me happy.
I still mess up. Last month my daughter was in a school spelling bee, and I held my breath through every single round, my shoulders up by my ears the whole time. She got out on the word “accommodate” and just shrugged, walked off the stage and sat down next to me with a free cookie she’d gotten. I almost opened my mouth to say “Next time just practice the harder words” but I remembered the 10-minute rule, so I just said “That cookie does look really good.”
We got milkshakes after, and I didn’t mention the spelling bee again. I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of that little competitive twinge entirely. It’s hard to unlearn the idea that every small thing is a test that matters for the future. But I’m trying to keep my tests for my own life, and let my kid care about what she cares about. For now, that’s enough.
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