Participation Trophy Syndrome (PTS) is the name given to millenials' behavior which is believed to be caused by the overpraising of children beginning at a very young age. Today's youth are given trophies and praise for just abut anything they can be given praise for. Beginning around age three children begin to play sports where they will receive a trophy for every season they participate in no matter the skill or success of their team. The same is true in schools where students are given constant positive feedback on everything they do even when absolutely no accomplishments have been made. This overpraising continues throughout grade school and in some cases throughout higher education as well. Participation trophies were originally created to boost children's self esteem and make them feel better about themselves in all aspects of their lives. Many years later, some parts of the country have decided to stop giving participation trophies to every child whose name is on the roster because of the possible effects of PTS. There are generally three arguments with regards to how children should be given trophies. One side does not want trophies whatsoever. This side believes the trophies are not beneficial in any way and that they cause lasting damage to kids. The other extreme wants children to receive participation trophies for everything they do, forever. They believe the trophies boost self esteem and have no real side effects. The third argument is that children should be given trophies until middle school and then only the winners should be rewarded. They believe the trophies are a suitable way to get children into sports without having to force them, but they are also aware of the possible permanent effects of the constant praise that adolescents in today's politically correct society receive. I believe that participation trophies and liberal amounts of positive feedback in schools are beneficial up to age ten because they are a good way to get young children into sports and to give student an interest in school but after age ten overpraise will begin to cause long term effects on children that will carry with them into their adult life. 

Beginning at a young age children learn to be competitive in a variety of activities, the most important being school and youth sports. With these activities comes copious amounts of praise. Children love to be praised and they figure out quickly that they will be praised for high scores on tests in school. Children who are constantly overpraised for their efforts begin to seek only praise in school and lose interest in actually learning material in the classroom. A study found that "children praised for intelligence cared so much about their performance and how it reflected on them that they lied about their performance" (Mueller and Dweck, 43). Children worked only for the perceived reward and were willing to compromise their morality to get it. This is a serious issue caused by severe overpraising and becomes an even larger problem as these students grow up and are willing to lie to a boss about their performance to gain admiration. Instead of having learning goals the students have begun to do things simply because they know they will be rewarded. That is when praise becomes a problem. Children who are not able to cheat or lie about their performance have been taught to weigh their self-worth so heavily on the praise they receive that when they do not perform well they are devastated. 

The children who are undeservingly overpraised have been conditioned to always be winners regardless of their performance. This is especially concerning because as the children age they will inevitably falter at some point and "after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they'd rather cheat than risk failing again" (Merryman, np). The students have been told they cannot fail so when they do they can't cope. The same study found that children in a classroom can point out the students who have trouble meeting learning goals. "[Children] are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren't recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up" (Merryman, np). The praise sets an expectation of success and when it eventually is not reached the students are demoralized and the students who do succeed expect to be praised. This is fine while in elementary school but when the children become teenagers and young adults and are not given constant feedback, they break down. 

The age when students and athletes begin to face actual difficulties in their lives is the age when the trophies go from motivating to destructive. This is usually about the 5th grade when math and science get much more difficult and when sports become far more competitive and begin to hold tryouts. "Praise can instill a sense of contingent self-worth that leads to helplessness in the face of subsequent difficulties" (Henderson and Lepper, np). So, while the children do not face difficult obstacles in their learning, the praise is not harming them too severely. But as soon as they are, the praise has to stop or as these studies have proven, the children experience mental issues. 

The group that wants the trophies to be given out claims that the rewards teach the right values to kids and that they are for fun and don't have any adverse long term effects. They argue that the trophies make kids feel good and that they earn them. This side justifies these feelings by saying things like, "these kids need to be rewarded for finishing the season and not giving up on their team. These kids earn these trophies even if they don't win a single game" (Pawlowski, np). What this is saying is that the kids deserve an award for no success whatsoever. But that's not how the world actually works. Trophies are for winners and if children receive trophies without winning they begin to believe that they are entitled to a reward regardless of their achievements or lack thereof. One of the biggest symptoms of PTS is entitlement and children who are unjustly praised gain a sense of entitlement that they keep for the rest of their lives. In a business setting a worker who has been given unjust praise their whole life feels entitled to a promotion without the necessary performance. One trophy supporter said that "My children looks forward to their trophy as much as playing the game" (Merryman, np). This sends the message of entitlement and that to succeed at things all the kids have to do is show up. Hard work earns awards; children should not be praised or rewarded for just showing up. 

The trophy supporters also argue that the trophies are just for fun and don't carry any separate meaning. "I can't figure out what is so distasteful about a child getting a "good job" medal ...  My 4-year-old is starting soccer in the fall. Now, I don't care how good he is at the sport. Win or lose, that kid's coming home with a trophy" (Zadrosny, np). This will make the children subconsciously learn that they will be handed rewards no matter how well they perform. This attitude might follow them for years. The trophy supporters also argue that the trophies have become politicized to mean something that they don't. This argument expands to a much larger accusation that "the more adults win at life, the more likely they are to want to keep the spoils of victory out of the hands of losers. The desire to withhold participation trophies increased with income, age, and education" and "the further right [politically] respondents leaned, the less they were keen on prizes solely for participation. Progressives and liberals were most ready to hand them out" (Zadrosny, np). This may be true, but that doesn't mean that the trophies don't have an underlying affect on the children. When children are praised for everything they do they begin doing tasks simply for the reward. This leads to low effort output in school and in sports. "The more we teach our children to rely on external motivation from objects like trophies, the greater risk we run of undermining the very values we hope to instill" (Zadrosny, np). The goal of rewards is to motivate children to exert effort in the things they do but the rewarding is doing the exact opposite by teaching kids to only put in the effort necessary to get a prize which in the case of participation trophies is almost no effort at all. The question is not if the trophies make kids feel good, of course they do. The issue is that although the awards are fine for the time being, in the future the lasting effects and feelings of entitlement that the kids subconsciously picked up will be exposed. Lisa Heffernan says "participation trophies teach a worthwhile lesson: "There is something to teaching kids that it is worth keeping a commitment, that we value this. Winning and losing is not a lesson that kids need to search out to find. It's everywhere. But they also need to learn how important it is that everyone shows up" (np). This is a legitimate concern but surely children have learned this value after a few seasons of the sport. It is absurd to claim that the trophies are still teaching that same value after twenty seasons. The trophy supporters argue that the awards prevent depression in children because it makes them feel good about themselves. In a debate on Fox News Channel, David Webb said "there is a winner and there is a loser. That's the rules of the game. You win by being exceptional. The reason kids feel depressed is because they are so protected all the time so when something bad happens they have no resiliency and that is leaving them very vulnerable" (Patriots in The News). Again, the goal of the trophies is to attempt to prevent something that the trophies themselves might be causing. 

Losing is good for you. "Today's 20-somethings are struggling in the cold world after enjoying childhoods filled with warmth and support. Our parents tried to see how much self-confidence they could pack into us, outside of collecting dust and decorating childhood rooms, have these plaques and trophies served any real purpose?" (Diller, np). Yes, they have served some purpose. The trophies were originally created to raise the self-esteem and they did succeed in doing that. Researchers have concluded that the trophies were too successful. "[Children's self-esteems] are now so dramatically high that social scientists are considering whether they need to find a different measurement system -- we've broken the scale" (Diller, np). Children are now so full of themselves that they have almost no resilience after failure. Acknowledging children's every day achievements will likely have negative repercussions on their motivation to work toward them. Diller says, "In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life." This is spot on. Failing builds character and everyone has heard some form of a saying about a famous inventor who failed a thousand times to create something before succeeding one time. It should be perfectly alright to allow our youth to fail when clearly it does deliver some benefit that far outweighs any negative effects. Diller raised the point that by not allowing our kids to fail we might actually be setting them up for a more catastrophic failure in the future. She says "I wanted to give my children all they wanted, all I hadn't had. In doing so I may have deprived them of what they needed most: the grit and the tools, to take on the world and make their own way." When someone fails they learn one way to not do something. If they fail enough times they will find one way to do something. Allowing failure and embracing it is a vital element of learning in any aspect of life. 

Aside from the teenaged entitlement and motivation issues we can examine the question of how the trophies are detrimental to children's futures. To do this we must understand what the lasting effects actually are.  According to Ron Alsop, the "trophy generation" are millenials and it is they who are infected with PTS. He claims that the millenials have the most unrealistic expectations of how they will be treated when they enter the workforce of any past generation ever. He says, "millenials will learn that they will probably have to adjust their expectations if they hope to make the most of their talents and realize their personal and professional dreams" (np). The expectations he is referring to are the ones they have had throughout their lives. They expect to be constantly handed positive feedback and applause for their work because when they were in school that's how they were treated. They expect that they will be rewarded the same as the other members on the team regardless of individual performance because throughout their childhood they were taught that everyone is a winner, even the losers. They expect that they will be given every accommodation they ask for because they have been given those accommodations for the last twenty years. These trophy kids will not seamlessly integrate into existing workplaces. Alsop says "this generation of young people is quite serious about reshaping the work environment to conform to their personal goals and lives" (np) and "employers face some of their biggest management challenges ever as they try to integrate millions of millenials into a workplace with three other very different generations' (np). The last few generations have been historically unentitled and hardworking and may not take to kindly to the opposite behaviors from the millenials. The difference between them may very well be the lasting effects of the constant praise they were given as kids. 

Managing the millennials once they do enter the workforce will be a daunting task. They have not been well prepared for failure so "it may require more finesse in preparing them for receiving negative feedback, which of course is a necessary part of a leader's job that is critical to improving individual and organizational performance" (Crampton and Hodge, 4). Clearly the millenials are experiencing long term effects of PTS because managers and employers have openly voiced the difficulties in trying to integrate them into existing workplaces. Millenials have a different perspective on their abilities than past generations. They are "obsessed with career development and promotions based on skills, rather than seniority" (Crampton and Hodge, 4). They feel entitled to things that previous generations have not due to the overwhelming amount of praise and reassurance they have been given during their childhood. 

Evidence of the lasting effects of overpraise and participation trophies on children is stacked high. The negative effects of PTS far outweigh any momentary happiness that older children receive from being awarded the trophies. Once children are teenagers they generally only care about the championship trophies and the ones they know they worked really hard to earn. The rest, the participation trophies, will forever lie in a cardboard box in the attic. As a kid I knew which trophies I had earned and which ones I didn't but receiving them gave me an expectation that if I participated in something I deserved a trophy for it regardless of my individual performance.  As kids, they don't know the trophies are going to negatively affect them for life and if they did the kids wouldn't want them anyway. The trophies make young children momentarily happy and that should be the extent of their use. Awards are great for getting children interested in sports and activities that they would otherwise not have a desire to be exposed to but they have awful effects when given to kids who have graduated the elementary era of their lives. The trophies serve no purpose after kids begin to fail at other things in their life. Children don't begin to actively face challenges in school and sports until age ten and it is at that age that participation trophies and overpraising needs to end because it will foster behavior that will cause an array of problems with the kids later in life.

