I spent the afternoon on Friday watching a championship gala at my son’s school. Kids gave it their all from six year olds to the grade sevens. It was interesting to watch the passion, the energy and the camaraderie. Other than that I was rather bored. What was more interesting was the parochial support provided by parents. Obviously parents shouted for their own children but they also shouted for other children that they knew. The parents got really excited and certainly seemed to share the frustrations and joys of their offspring. I was unsure who to shout for. Not knowing any of the children older than six, that left me in a bit of a quandary. What on earth do you use as your logic to decide which child will get your support over others? Or should I be supporting the underdogs? Big questions for a Friday!

One thing that struck home is that this is all very great preparation for the big world out there. There can be only one winner. Second may as well be last, etc. The world, starting in school, makes very definite distinctions as to who is better and who not. The distinctions are based on competitions that vary from swimming to spelling. In the big world these distinctions are most important as they define who will be successful and who not.

For the children that win, I suppose it is easy to see that we are teaching them all the benefits of competing. If you win, you get a trophy, you get wonderful recognition and you learn that this makes you feel very good about yourself. These are all wonderful attributes for cowing our children into the model that makes business work in society. In other words, they fit right in and are only too happy to be climbing the corporate ladder.

For the rest, I suppose that they know they have to work harder in order to be the best. They will need to refocus their efforts and try again. For most of them winning will still remain the primary objective. They too will fit into the corporate model beautifully, except they will know what it feels like to put in the work and be sidelined without any of the glory.

From a religious point of view, we know that in order to inherit the Kingdom of God, we need to be like children. In a book called Jesus Today, by Albert Nolan, it is stated that in order to be like a child, the qualities that we require are humility, childlike trust in God, a sense of wonder, playfulness and joy! That makes perfect sense to me and yet I wondered if I as a parent encourage these attributes or try to get my children to grow out of them.

Humility is a difficult character trait to teach, if not impossible. It is more a state of being when we know we don’t need to compete or compare ourselves to others as those comparisons are irrelevant. Yet the school and I encourage my children to win at every opportunity and to be the best (not necessarily their best). A childlike sense of trust in God is exceedingly difficult to encourage as it certainly seems like it does not have a place in the world today. Individualism is the way of the world, it is all about me and how great I am. Encouraging a sense of wonder, playfulness and joy is the easy part although this also takes some effort.

I suppose the bigger question is do we want our children to succeed in the world as we know it or do we want them to grow up with a deep love of God? The two don’t seem to be exactly in tune with each other....

On the other hand is it important for all of us to ‘grow up’ and compete in the world and later relearn the key qualities of a child in order to build and strengthen our relationship with God?

Is there a way that I can provide my children with both?