Children are made to live, not to be competitive.

Are we demanding too much of our children?

Parents who sign their children up for an enormous amount of school activities, hours dedicated to homework that swallow up half the afternoon, the need to make children excel in one of the hobbies we push them into? Childhood has its own crises and complications, but it seems that adults are also doing their bit to make this carefree and apparently unproductive way of life come to an end soon.

The aim seems to be to produce a generation of "elite childrenThe aim seems to be to raise a generation of "elite children", competent and equipped with a host of skills and competencies that are supposed to make life easier for them.

But this trend has very negative psychological consequences.

Putting childhood in check

Some people, when going through existential crises, turn their gaze to the way children live life. It is not surprising; the creativity, the spontaneity with which they discover the simplest and most honest ways to act in every moment, the look clean of prejudices... seem to be a characteristic that we enjoy during the first years.

What happens to this childlike spirit is, to a certain extent, a mystery. It is not possible to say with firmness and total certainty what it is that gradually extinguishes the childlike flame that was once in us. However, in some respects it is not difficult to imagine in certain aspects it is not difficult to imagine possible reasons that explain what it is that kills people's childhood, or that it has abandoned our style of life.It is not a Biological process, but a biological one. It is not a biological process, but a learned and cultural one: the competitive spirit and the stress it generates.

• Recommended article: "How to improve your child's emotional education, in 15 keys".

We are creating children with curriculum

It is clear that taking on responsibilities and starting very long term means that the lifestyle (and behavior) of children cannot remain unchanged during the passage to adulthood. Recently, however, something is happening that did not happen before and that makes children less and less children at a younger and younger age: the competitive spirit has entered the lives of the little ones..

It has its logic, although it is a perverse logic. In an increasingly individualistic society where social problems are disguised as individual problems, the same type of messages are always repeated: "make a living", "be the best" or even "if you were born poor it is not your fault, but if you died poor it is". There is a paradox that, in a world in which the place and family in which one is born are the variables that best predict one's health and economic status in adulthood, all the pressure falls on individuals, all the pressure falls on individuals.. Even on the youngest.

And individuals are forced to compete. How can happiness be achieved? By being competitive, as if we were companies, in order to reach middle age with a certain socioeconomic status. When should we start competing? As soon as possible.

The way to create children with curriculaprepared for the law of the jungle that will govern their adult lives, has already been paved. And, if left unchecked, it can mean the death of the possibility of fully enjoying childhood.

Overreaching parents

Children who end up adapting to the lifestyle imposed on them by their parents are beginning to show signs of stress and even anxiety crises. Obligations related to homework and extracurricular activities introduce into children's lives tensions endemic to the adult world which, moreover, in many cases are difficult to justify without drawing on imagination about what might happen in the future.

This is relatively new and not always easy to detect, as some parents and guardians confuse the fact that children seem to reach the demanding goals set for them with an indicator of their state of health and well-being. Thus, schoolchildren between the ages of 5 and 12 may be performing reasonably well at tasks such as learning to play an instrument or mastering a second language, but in the long run they will suffer stress if the pressure is too high..

The symptoms of this stress, because they are not always very obvious and do not seem serious, may be mistaken as a normal part of the process of raising competitive children. But the truth is that their quality of life will be compromised, and so will their tendency not to judge every experience according to its usefulness.

Their enjoyment of childhood will be overshadowed by parent-imposed aspirations that, in reality, are only sustained by what adults interpret as a "sign of a successful life". They are not so much concerned with the welfare of their children as with imposing on them an image of the ideal person, to whom all doors will be open.

Fear of failure

But pressure and pushing children towards what is understood as success is only one part of the story. The other is the rejection of what seems to be useless.which brings no clear benefit, regardless of whether it is enjoyable or not. Investing time in being children seems to be valued only as time to rest, relax and gather strength to get back to what really matters: preparing to enter the competitive world, the people market, on the right foot.

Similarly, not being the best at something is perceived as a failure that should be hidden by devoting time and effort to other things at which one excels more, at best, or by blaming the child in question for "not wanting to win". The consequences of this are clearly negative: the activity is belittled as a goal in itself and only the result is valued in comparison to others..

Showing "weakness" in sports or school performance is considered a cause for shame, because it is interpreted as a symptom of possible failures that could be experienced in adulthood. This causes self-esteem to suffer, stress levels to skyrocket, and the child to feel responsible for not reaching goals that others have set for him or her.

Conquering childhood again

Even adults may be able to recapture for themselves many of the values and habits of childhood, so children have an even easier time enjoying it.

To help make this possible parents and caregivers simply need to adopt a different attitude and embrace a non-competitive set of priorities.. This process involves admitting that, although we adults may seem more prepared than anyone else when it comes to living life, children are the true specialists in the way they experience childhood. It is worth the redundancy.