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BACKGROUND MUSIC NOT YOUR SCENE?
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO TURN IT OFF RIGHT HERE!
(It's a generation-gap thing!

looking around at the five year-olds I know, I get the strong feeling that losing is much more painful for them than it used to he for us. On the rare occasions when their kindly parents allow these small treasures to get thrashed at Snakes and Ladders or Twister or Old Maid, the sheer fury and frustration and disbelieving misery they experience is palpable. My theory, for what it's worth (which, not having any children myself, I know is negligible) is that kids of the '90s don't have enough practice in losing. They live in a world where losing has become non-U--- it's vaguely unacceptable, even potentially damaging. Instead, loving parents and careful teachers try to ensure even-handedness and fairness, dedicated to making sure that no one misses out. So if you go to a children's party these days, every kid has to win a prize. Even Pass the Parcel is laboriously designed so each time a sheet of paper is peeled back, a clue refers to one of the children there and that child gets a prize. Now, in the old days, there was only one prize at the kernel of the parcel and it went to whichever kid just happened to be nominated as the one with the biggest smile or the cleanest teeth or whatever. The rest of us missed out and had to lump it, peevishly or not. And it's not just birthday parties. There's the Little Athletics competition where the children now compete in teams so no individual is singled out for a prize. Then there are the school prizes which are carefully allotted to everyone in the class, so every student at some time in the year will get to go home with a Trying Hard award or a Best Pupil gold star. On one level. kids see through this charade. When I watched a bunch of sixyearolds playing Pass the Parcel, they knew exactly who hadn't got their mandatory prize yet. Kids even distinguish clearly between the "real" prizes they win at school for some exceptional deed and the generic prizes that come round as part of the primary school routine. (On the other hand, this is not always easy for the parents to do. One mum I know was mortified when her little daughter came home from school with a lot of "gold medals" from the Primary School Olympics and she felt she hadn't gauged the level of response quite right. The mum explains, "I just said to her automatically, 'That's nice, sweetie, did everyone win a lot of medals like that?' She was most indignant and said 'No, just me', so then I had to change my approach and be especially excited and enthusiastic.") But even if the kids are not quite hoodwinked by this munificence ... and even if the idea of noncompetitive sports sounds like heaven on a hockey stick to a knock-kneed, weak-eyed, spaghetti-armed non-athlete like myself ... and even if it's very laudable to try to protect those kids who are never singled out, I still think kids don't get enough practice at losing. And they are left with the impression that the world is meant to be fair. Now we know from the work of cognitive therapists that one of the false messages we tell ourselves which leads to misery is that life is meant to be fair. And when it is not wc feel ripped off and cross and bothered. What future unhappiness is being stored up for these five-year-olds who are being cossetted in a world where no one ever misses out unfairly and one ever loses? Or are parents just giving them an idyll on which they can always look back in wonder? Jane Freeman was writing for The Age

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