3 Sisters 7 Days

I usually spend Thursdays working at home – albeit in fits and starts between assigning the day’s lessons for my four home-schooled children, answering their questions, and watching Olivia work. I’m not kidding. Olivia likes her “teacher” – whether it’s me, her father, or one of her older siblings – to sit beside her while she completes her math and language arts “home work” and reads. I usually confine my earnest “watching” to the first 20-30 minutes after I finish reading the paper, and before I head into my office to begin my day.

Today, though, I was facing a 5 PM deadline for a grant application. Meeting it was likely to require frequent and repeated interactions with my Co-PIs (”Principle Investigators,” for the uninitiated), our administrative staff, and proposed project collaborators. Consequently, I was up early and had finished a 6-mile run and my first cup of coffee long before Olivia even woke up around 8:30 AM. I did manage to pull myself away from my work long enough to fix Olivia a no-cooking-required breakfast of milk, apple juice, and Cheerios and park her on the couch to watch one of her Scholastic books CDs. No, I don’t recall which, but it must not have been very interesting because Olivia was gone before it was over.

I hadn’t heard the door chime, so I assumed she was somewhere in the house, happily occupied, and – more importantly – quiet. I continued working.

Sometime between then and “early lunch” – you know, when the kids first start asking if they can have something to eat because they’re hungry, their stomachs are growling, and it’s SO CLOSE to lunchtime anyway – Olivia joined me in my office and asked me to tie her cleats. Yep, she was decked out in full soccer garb. Mind you, she’s never actually played soccer and it’s unlikely she remembers her siblings playing when she was much younger. But there she was with ponytails she fixed herself, wearing a pair of Reiley’s old soccer or basketball shorts, a t-shirt with a soccer ball screen print, soccer socks, shin guards, and cleats.

“Mommy, will you open the [sliding] glass door so I can play soccer?”

“Sure…” I said, as I opened the door, and out she went.

A few minutes later, Olivia was banging on the door. I knew she wouldn’t be able to hear me if I tried talking to her through the glass, so I got up, walked across the family room and kitchen, to open the door. “Yes?” I asked.

“Mommy, Roxie is out of her kennel…Can I play with Roxie?”

“Hmm…” I thought. Roxie is an Australian Shepherd mix who is at least 15 years old. Once a menace to our neighborhood’s small animal population, she now has to be coaxed up and off of the pillow she sleeps on, and guided out of her kennel into the yard. I couldn’t imagine Roxie “playing” with Olivia. Still…

“Okay, I guess so,” I told Olivia.

“Yeah!”

I closed the door and returned to my office. It was a while before I heard from Olivia again…She came running into my office (nope, no idea who let her in or what prompted them to do so)…

“Mommy, I winned! I really did. I winned Roxie.”

“Great!” I said, and paused.

“Mommy, can I have one of your trophies?”

“Hon…” I said, “I’d love to give you one of my trophies, but the truth is, they were thrown away a long time ago.”

“Oh,” she said, and paused…”Then can I have one of Reiley’s?”

“Sweetheart,” I began, “You usually get a trophy because your team played better than all the other teams, and you won A LOT of games.” I refrained from adding that beating a geriatric dog is generally not considered worthy of a trophy.

“Did Reiley win a lot of games?”

“Well…yes…some of her teams did…”

“Oh…Mommy, can you help me take my cleats off?” And Olivia was on to something else.

But I was left thinking about the truth…As just about any parent would guess at this juncture, no, Reiley did n ot earn most of her trophies by playing well; rather, like the majority of children playing organized sports today, she was awarded them simply for participating. And much as I support rewarding children for having fun, learning new skills, cooperating with their teammates, good sportsmanship, etc. I hate the currently commonplace “participation trophy.

Rich Tierney has it right: “The participation trophy is one of the most misused and irrelevant pieces of hardware sitting on your child’s shelf. A trophy should represent an accomplishment of some sort, but there is no true accomplishment in participating, at least by the standards of most participation trophies.”

I can bet that’s not what Reiley thinks…there was no way she’d give Olivia one of her prized trophies – and certainly not for beating the dog at backyard soccer.