Additional Resources

 

http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/races-sports/how-participation-trophies-are-making-our-kids-soft-20150725

This article talks about how rewarding kids just for participating can have a negative impact, producing a self-obsessed, irresponsible, and unmotivated generation of false achievers. It also claims that parents are part of the problem.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/17/health/participation-trophies-parenting-debate/

In this article, it discusses the big debate that talks about  if sports participation deserves a trophy. There are opinions stated by several parents, ranging from professional athletes, and authors of sports, behavior and psychology books, all talking about if children who just participate in sports should receive a trophy. The answers vary from yes, it will help acknowledge effort by doing so, and no, children need to learn that they cannot get rewarded for not succeeding.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9862693/Praise-childrens-effort-not-their-intelligence.html

This article goes into detail about how praising children’s effort and not their intelligence is a lot more beneficial towards their psychological development. It was mentioned that parents who told their children how smart they were were actually doing more harm than good, according to a cited study which says to reward and praise effort and not solely intelligence.

 

https://www.characterandleadership.com/participation-trophies-special-or-harmful/

This article contains pros and cons of participation trophies. One of the pros of participation trophies is that the trophies makes kids feel good about being on a team, competing and having fun. They don’t feel left out or “less than” their peers who won the league. Then from the cons of participation trophies is that it actually harms kids to constantly praise them win or lose. Lastly, the article talks about how participation trophies potentially takes away from the motivation to improve.

 

://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/losing-is-good-for-you.html

In this article, discusses how trophies were once rare things and they actually meant something. The article also contains some information for  Southern California, in regional branch of the American Youth Soccer Organization, they hand out roughly 3,500
awards each season. The rest of the article are many theories on how losing is good for the kids in today’s society.

 

https://www.reed.edu/motivation/docs/PraiseReview.pdf

This article displays an in depth analysis on the effects of praise on a child’s intrinsic motivation in the current day and age. Henderlong and Lepper argue about how too much praise may undermine a child’s confidence and ability to succeed in the future because of how their intrinsic motivation is affected. They additionally talk about the motivational consequences of too much praise, and how they can be adapted accordingly to the recipient.

 

https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/does-rewarding-children-backfire/?_r=0

This New York Times article pivots around the question: does rewarding children backfire? Author Lisa Belkin speaks about how rewarding children too much may potentially backfire, because of the fact that dangling a goody in a child’s face will only serve as beneficial for a short period of time. Rather, it is better to set children up so that their compliance levels are good for the long run.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-sun-0712-balancing-act-20150710-column.html

This article discusses the consequences of overpraising children for their intelligence, and to therefore proceed with caution. Additionally, recognizing and even celebrating children’s mistakes was identified as a good thing, which indicates that the child is expanding out of their comfort zone and try new things, which is a lot better than just being praised for being smart, according to the article.