The cinema?

I am totally in love with that phrase. :cool:

Me to my neighbor when I find yet another of his golf balls in my woods: "I am so in pain over this, and can't imagine our Lord's tears ..."

No, kids crave their parents acceptance. When that acceptance has been translated into pleasure or disapproval over individual actions, then that is when kids begin to crave the praise.


Everyone is born with a natural desire to learn and succeed. It is often driven out of them by the conditional acceptance of those around them. With support and unconditional love, I believe every child will do their best in everything they want to do.

Why does it have to be about winning or losing? My question is not, should one person win musical chairs or should everyone, my question is why musical chairs? Wouldn't it be a more fun game, if instead of everyone trying to snatch a chair and one person being sent away, all the kids try to fit into the remaining chairs? Then in the end you have a whole group of giggling kids and not five sad kids and one happy kid (or five kids that know they got a booby prize and one kid that resents not being the real winner).

The lesson between the two games is different as well. In the fun version kids work as a team to solve a problem and reach a goal. In the standard version kids focus on defeating their opponent. I stipulate that the former is a more valuable skill to learn. I don't know anyone that needs to defeat people on a regular basis. Almost everyone I know has to work with others to reach common goals. Why are we drilling competition and the need to "win" into kids at such a young age? What's the point of that? I don't see it as anything but destructive.

I consider competition as valuable because I consider losing a valuable lesson to learn. Not everything in this world can be cooperative. There are points in everyone's life, no matter how hard you try, where someone will "win" and someone will "lose". By starting the lessons early, with trivial things like musical chairs, that losing an individual competition is NOT important, then they are prepared for the inevitable situations in life when someone else is rewarded and they are not.

One further thought. I played competitive sports growing up. Not at a particularly high level, but I was always involved. Mostly soccer, and I played basketball and baseball for a few seasons. I wasn't very good at any of them, but I was motivated and always had fun.

My parents didn't laud me extravagantly when I won. They didn't chastise me when I lost. Most importantly, they didn't prevent me from doing either. I went out there, and I played a game. They'd ask if I had fun, they congratulate me if I won or if I scored a goal, they'd ask if I learned something and what I might do differently given the opportunity. And in the end, I learned that losing is not a big deal. It's part of the experience. It's what makes winning so great. And I'm better for it. It allows me to try things without fearing loss, because I've been there and know that life goes on.

Perhaps I have been watching too much Colbert Report.

Or maybe Moonliner's just a little hypersensitive about the term "War on Christmas".

When I coached soccer or just taught stuff to my kids, my message was that you're going to have more fun trying to do something the right way than just screwing around. It's more fun running around and trying to kick the ball than standing around and letting your teammates take a beating. It's more fun trying to do the puzzle than throwing the pieces across the room. Etc.

I think you can have both versions of musical chairs (though I'm a Duck, Duck, Goose man myself). The "competitive" version is valuable because little kids--and a lot of big kids--lack a well developed sense that there is such a thing as the future, that you get to try again. These disappointments, whether it's losing at a game or letting the ice cream truck pass by, are good ways to instill the lesson that you can't have it your way all the time and that tomorrow is another day.

I see- well, I disagree and take some exception to your generality- but it's not worth getting any further into it.

Ohh, nice use of the passive aggressive debate technique!

I get to make my point but you don't get a chance to respond because I have already deemed it not worth getting any further into.

Well done :snap: