Why Are Parents More Competitive Than Their Kids These Days? A Teacher’s Observations and Realistic Tips
Last Saturday I stood on the sidelines of a 10U rec soccer game, my paper Gatorade cup leaking sweat down my wrist, and watched a moment that summed up everything I’ve been noticing lately. Javi, a quiet 10-year-old I teach in fourth grade, had just broken free down the left side, an open goal 10 feet in front of him. He tripped over his own cleats, and the ball rolled harmlessly out of bounds. Javi pushed himself up, grinned at his teammate who’d passed him the ball, and brushed grass off his shorts. No frustration, no embarrassment, just ready to get back in the game. From three feet behind me, his dad yelled so loud the parents on the other side turned: “Javi, what is wrong with you? Keep your head up! That was the shot we worked on all week!”
When the final whistle blew, the kids all bolted for the snack table, dropping their shin guards in the dirt and crowding around the cooler of orange slices. I heard Javi laughing with his friends about a silly mid-game fart, and no one mentioned the missed shot. The parents, though, clustered in a small group by the parking lot, voices low. One was asking who’d gotten invites to the elite regional travel team tryouts next month. Another complained that the rec coach didn’t run enough offense drills, that her son was “wasting his potential” playing with kids who “don’t care as much.” When a mom asked me if I thought her son needed private soccer coaching to stay on track for high school varsity, I realized: none of these kids are worried about high school varsity right now. Only the parents are.
I get it, though. I’ve been that parent. Two months ago, I sat in the stands at my 8-year-old daughter’s first level 2 gymnastics meet, watching her on the balance beam. She wobbled, fell off halfway through, got back up, wobbled again, and finished. I sat there gripping my water bottle, mentally calculating what her score would mean for qualifying for the state meet next spring, wondering if we should add an extra practice day a week, if I was dropping the ball by not paying for private lessons. When she ran over to me after awards, she held up a cheap participation ribbon with a plain white edge and said, “Mom, can we stop at the craft store on the way home? I want to add glitter stickers to this. Mine’s the only one that doesn’t sparkle.” All that stress I’d built up, and she just wanted glitter. That’s when it hit me: the competition isn’t coming from them. It’s coming from us.
It’s not that we’re bad parents, either. It’s that for years, we’ve been fed this idea that every small choice our kid makes now builds to their big future, that every win is a win for our parenting and every loss is a failure on our part. Social media doesn’t help—we scroll through our feeds and see everyone else’s kids hitting new milestones, getting new trophies, getting into fancy summer programs, and we forget that no one posts the missed shots or the falls off the beam. We compare our messy, behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel, and suddenly a 10-year-old soccer game feels like a make-or-break moment instead of just a Saturday morning activity. We’re scared of being the parent who didn’t do enough, so we turn every playdate, every test, every game into a competition before our kids even know it’s a competition.
Over the past year, I’ve tried a few small things that have helped me dial it back, and I’ve suggested them to parents at school who’ve said it makes a difference. First, I changed the first question I ask after any activity. It used to be “How did you do?” Now it’s always “What was the most fun part of today?” It sounds small, but it shifts the whole conversation. Last week, my daughter came home from gymnastics and told me the most fun part was helping the new girl find her missing leotard in the locker room, and I didn’t even think to ask about her beam score until dinner. It takes the pressure off immediately, and it reminds me what’s actually important to her.
Second, I have a one no-competition rule a week. One activity, no scores, no rankings, no talk of future teams or next levels. For my daughter, that’s one practice a week where she doesn’t have to run through her entire routine. She can just mess around on the foam pit and play tag with her friends. For my soccer team, the last 10 minutes of every practice is free play, no positions, no score, no coaching from me. I just stand back and let them play. I’ve noticed more parents on the sideline stop yelling instructions and just chat with each other once they realize no one’s keeping track.
Third, when I catch myself scrolling through kid achievement posts and feeling that twist of competitiveness, I purposefully scroll over to the accounts I follow that post bad gardening photos and burnt sourdough. It’s a quick reset that reminds me everyone’s life is messy, no kid wins at everything, and the highlight reel isn’t real. I don’t have to delete my social media, I just have to shift what I look at for 30 seconds.
I still catch myself sometimes. Last week, I found myself looking up high school soccer roster requirements before Javi even got to middle school, and I had to close the tab and walk away. It’s hard to unlearn this, that your kid’s success isn’t your success. But every time I see Javi laughing with his friends after a bad play, or my daughter running up to me with a plain ribbon asking for glitter, I remember: the kids are doing fine. They don’t need us to compete for them. They just need us to hand them the orange slices and the glitter stickers, and let them have their Saturday.
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