November 30, 2016
Interview with Ashley Merryman co-author of the book Top Dog
Mike Carruthers:
A lot of the competition has been taken out of kids’ sports everyone’s a winner and no one keeps an official score.
Ashley Merryman:
But the kids keep score, they all know and actually the sort of illusion that everybody wins is really kind of troubling to kids.
Ashley Merryman co-author of the book Top Dog…
Kids know when they’re doing badly and to tell them it’s great is really just as much as a problem as the kid who hit the home run and doesn’t get any credit for that either. Because what kids need to do is to develop a sense of agency. And agency is the psychological construct and if you have kids that say, “Wow I really did terribly at baseball today”. And everyone says, “No, no you did great.” I can’t trust myself.
Competition is part of human nature and Ashley says you really cannot engineer it out of children’s lives.
The researchers say that you can eliminate competition all you want and that works until they’re 3. But from 3 on they are hyper-aware of who’s the best reader in class, who’s the best athlete.
If you have any doubts that human beings are competitive by nature…
One of my favorite studies, they actually timed people leaving parking spaces in an Atlanta shopping mall. And it’s not your imagination if someone knows you’re waiting they take longer to leave. The idea that they have to give your spot to you means they stay longer because now they want it more.
