Overheard a dad at the park tell his kid that "winning isn't everything" but then coached him differently

I was sitting on a bench near the playground last Saturday and heard this father tell his son, about 8 years old, that the important thing is to have fun and not worry about winning. But then the kid struck out in a pickup baseball game and I watched the dad pull him aside and give him a full tutorial on how to swing harder next time. It made me wonder, are we teaching kids one thing but showing them another? Do you think parents secretly push winning while saying they don't care? I'd be curious if anyone else has seen this kind of mixed message.

2 comments

2 Comments

ben_nguyen16d ago

Read some study that says kids pick up on that stuff way more than parents realize.

iris57416d ago

Right. Because my toddler definitely doesn't repeat anything I say in the car when I'm stuck in traffic. She just happens to be an expert on the qualifications of the driver in front of us. My personal favorite is when she told the grocery store cashier that his job looked "really boring." Kids are basically tiny, unstoppable recording devices with no filter and zero sense of timing. So yeah, that study probably nailed it.