I WISH I’D BEEN MORE COMPETITIVE AS A PARENT – IT DRIVES CHILDREN TO TRY HARDER

At my daughter’s 18th birthday party a couple of months ago, I gave a speech that I thought struck the right balance between parental pride and merciless piss-taking. I celebrated her excellent A-level results, her spectacular sense of humour and her unfailing kindness. But so as not to make myself sound like one of those annoying nutters who can’t stop showing off about their kids, I chucked in the story of her rubbish performance at school sports day 2011, aged four. Competing in the sack race, she humiliated herself by collapsing inside her sack at the starting line, before fighting her way out, stumbling halfway down the track, then giving up, turning back and returning to the start.

I recognised it at the time as a simple act of honest defeatism, something I myself have practised throughout my own inauspicious sporting career.

I remember my wife and I finding the whole spectacle very entertaining at the time. We laughed at the mother who punched the air and shouted “WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!” as her daughter launched herself over the finishing line in first place. We thought that sort of competitive, performative parenting seemed so uptight and embarrassing. We didn’t know the half of it.

In the affluent London borough of Merton, parents have recently been banned from attending primary school sporting events due to the bad behaviour of watching adults. Organisers cited examples such as adults “cutting across finish lines (physically impeding runners)” and “abuse towards officials and other children”. 

While sharp-elbowed middle-class parenting is nothing new, a couple of factors seem to have driven it to new extremes. One is social media, which rubs our faces in the successes of other people’s kids every day, often making us feel inadequate by comparison. The other is the rise of high-performance, corporate thinking in the adult world. A generation of middle-class parents in thrall to 5am starts, ice baths and marginal gains may be allowing their neurotic fixation on achievement to trickle down to their impressionable children.

“Professional parents often bring their business speak home and apply it to parenting,” says Dave Earl of Boom Tennis in Surrey, a coaching academy for advanced athletes between 11 and 16. “People see their kids as investments and try to manage them using systems they’ve got from their workplace. I’ve seen parents sit their kids down after a coaching session and do a monthly review of key performance indicators.”

While he says this can sometimes help kids succeed, it is often at the expense of their enjoyment and happiness. “We live in a world where everything has to be measurable and ranked,” says Earl. “It’s the corporatisation of childhood. It puts kids under so much pressure that they often lose all the love they originally had for the sport and just give up.”

Some parents, he says, will go to any lengths to secure victory for their child. “I was at a tournament where a dad stood behind his daughter’s 13-year-old opponent at the back of the court, whispering abuse while she was trying to serve. He started by telling her she was rubbish and, when that didn’t seem to have any impact on her performance, he started to tell her she was ugly. I’d like to say it was an isolated example, but it’s not. There is a generation of parents who are passing this ruthless attitude onto very young children.”

As an uncompetitive parent, I have always tried to discourage a “be the best” mindset. When I was a kid, I was never that good at football, but I didn’t let that stop me from playing non-stop. Taking part was a huge source of fun, fulfilment and connection throughout my childhood. Had I been preoccupied with being better than everyone else, I would have almost certainly jacked it all in – and missed out on all the cherished friendships and brilliant memories I picked up along the way.

I remember coming on as a sub for the last 15 minutes of an under-12s match. My dad had come along to watch and brought his camera. After the game, I asked if he got any good pictures of me in action. “I got a snap of every touch of the ball you had,” he grinned. “Which makes two in total.” Which might sound mean, but I interpreted it as a light-hearted acceptance of my mediocre performance. Certainly, it was preferable to the response of some of my teammates’ dads, who would torment them with abuse for even the slightest error.

My wife and I took a similarly light-hearted approach with our own kids. After the sack race incident, I remember taking our daughter for an ice cream and giving her the whole, “It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part” speech. I think we assumed from an early age that she was unlikely to excel at sports. I’m not sure why, because she’s always been fit and healthy.

Did we get this right? Neither of us was a particularly talented athlete, so maybe we were projecting. In any case, she never much improved. Sometimes I wonder if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. By writing off her chances at an early age and encouraging her to accept her shortcomings, perhaps we condemned her to years of sporting disappointment. Maybe if we’d pushed her just a little harder, she would have at least found PE lessons less of an undignified endurance.

Not all parents see pushiness as a bad thing. One friend of mine has a son who was signed to a top London football club’s academy at a very young age. While he witnessed more than a few parental meltdowns on the touchline, he also believes the right kind of competitiveness is beneficial for some children. “I would say every kid I know who’s made it has a strong, loving and supportive family around them,” he says. “Some of the most vocal or critical were also, perversely, the most supportive. And their drive often helped the kids to overcome the hurdles, as it’s never a smooth ride.”

Maybe my son could have fulfilled his own dreams of playing for West Ham’s youth team had I pushed him harder in his earlier years. He had some talent, but he lacked a bit of focus on the football pitch and didn’t care too much whenever he made a mistake. Ultimately, I was pretty proud of that. I admired the way he remained relaxed in his approach and didn’t let his emotions or sense of self-worth be shaped entirely by sporting performance. Unlike me, he didn’t stick with the sport once he realised he wasn’t going to be the best.

But now he’s older, I worry that, by celebrating his indifference, I might have cost him the years of fun that even average footballing ability can sometimes deliver. And in my self-critical moments, I wonder where my own lack of competitiveness really comes from. I have always adopted a laid-back, “Nothing’s worth getting too upset about,” attitude to most areas of endeavour: not just sport but career and academia too. I like to pretend I’m just too smart and relaxed to want to conquer summits, smash goals and crush opponents. But a small voice inside my mind sometimes whispers that I am just afraid of failure. The prospect of falling short is so scary to me that I simply refuse to take anything too seriously. Maybe that’s cost me a bit of glory along the way. I hope it won’t do the same for my kids.

Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to have had a bad effect. My son doesn’t play football anymore, but he is intelligent, funny and likes to keep fit by running and going to the gym. He focuses on self-improvement, not being better than all of his peers. I suspect this is probably better for his long-term mental and emotional health.

When I asked him if he felt he was a competitive person, he outlined a philosophy that will probably serve him well in life: “I’m competitive about things I think I’ve got a decent chance of winning, anything else I try not to care about too much.” That’s my boy.

‘Stop Shitting Yourself – 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm The F*ck Down’ by Sam Delaney is out now in hardback, audiobook and Kindle edition, published by Constable

2025-11-07T10:33:14Z