From a very young age, many of our children who participate in sports come to expect medals, trophies, or ribbons at the end of a season—simply for participating. Those medals and awards end up in a pile in a corner of their bedroom over the years and quickly become meaningless to those kids. They haven’t really learned anything from them. In some ways, the awards are really for the parents—it is often we who get the most out of seeing the accumulation of medals and ribbons. It sure feels better to congratulate our kids on their achievements than it does to console them for a tough failure. In
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