The Hands We Hold

The photo is of my child and her teammate waiting to hear whether their names would be called for the semifinals. They had competed against one another. They both wanted the same opportunity. Yet, while they waited, they held hands.

This is what it is about.

We talk often in education about social-emotional learning. We create lessons about empathy, sportsmanship, self-regulation, kindness, and responsible decision-making. We build character education programs and identify the traits we hope children will demonstrate.

Holding the hand of the person you just competed against is more than an SEL lesson.

It is a core value.

It is a heart practice.

It is the ability to want something deeply for yourself without hoping someone else loses it. It is understanding that another person’s success does not diminish your own. It is standing beside someone in a moment of uncertainty and reminding them, without saying a word, that they do not have to experience it alone.

That does not happen because we put “kindness” on a bulletin board.

It happens because children have been shown, repeatedly, that how they treat people matters just as much as what they accomplish. It happens because adults have helped them manage disappointment without becoming bitter, celebrate success without becoming arrogant, and compete without losing their compassion.

As practitioners, we must ask ourselves whether we are creating environments where children learn to see one another as people first and competitors second.

Competition has tremendous value. It teaches preparation, perseverance, courage, emotional control, and how to perform under pressure. It gives children opportunities to experience pride and disappointment, sometimes within minutes of one another. But competition without humanity can quickly become comparison, jealousy, exclusion, and the belief that someone else must lose in order for us to feel successful.

Our responsibility is not to eliminate competition. It is to teach children how to compete well.

We teach this when we praise the student who congratulates a classmate after not being selected. We teach it when we notice who encourages others, not only who earns the highest score. We teach it when we refuse to allow rankings, awards, grades, positions, or recognition to determine whose effort is worthy of respect.

We teach it when we model it ourselves.

Children notice how adults react when someone else receives an opportunity. They notice whether we celebrate colleagues or quietly resent them. They notice whether we speak respectfully about other teams, schools, classrooms, and families. They notice whether our encouragement extends only to the people whose success benefits us.

They are learning from all of it.

The culture children create is often a reflection of the culture adults have permitted, modeled, and reinforced. Before we ask students to demonstrate compassion during competition, we must honestly examine the messages they receive from us.

• Do my students believe that another person’s success can coexist with their own?

• Do I intentionally recognize encouragement, empathy, and sportsmanship?

• How do I respond when a student is disappointed by a result, grade, role, or decision?

• Do I unintentionally create environments where children feel compared to one another?

• What do students hear me say about people who outperform me or receive opportunities I wanted?

• Do I teach children how to celebrate others while still honoring their own disappointment?

• Are kindness and character treated as core expectations or optional additions?

• Would my students know how to support someone they had just competed against?

Children need more than reminders to “be kind.” They need specific language, consistent modeling, and repeated opportunities to practice what it looks like to compete with courage while remaining connected to others.

• Name the behavior when you see it.

  • Do not let acts of encouragement pass unnoticed. Say, “You were disappointed, but you still celebrated your classmate. That showed tremendous character.”

• Teach language for complicated moments.

  • Give students phrases they can use when they are both happy for someone else and disappointed for themselves: “I am proud of you. I need a little time to process my own feelings, but I am glad you succeeded.”

• Recognize more than the outcome.

  • Celebrate preparation, persistence, courage, teamwork, improvement, and the way students treat one another. Make it clear that achievement is important, but it is not the only thing that makes a person worthy of recognition.

• Allow disappointment without allowing cruelty.

  • Children do not need to pretend they are never upset. Teach them that feelings are valid, but harmful behavior, unkind comments, and diminishing someone else’s success are not.

• Build rituals of encouragement.

  • Create intentional opportunities for students to wish one another well before presentations, performances, assessments, tryouts, elections, or competitions.

• Model generosity toward your own peers.

  • Publicly celebrate the work of colleagues. Let students see adults share credit, acknowledge one another’s strengths, and support people whose accomplishments may exceed their own.

• Reflect after competitive experiences.

  • Ask students not only, “How did you perform?” but also, “Who supported you?” “Who did you encourage?” and “What did you learn about yourself and the people around you?”

• Partner with families.

  • Encourage families to ask about effort, character, and relationships before asking about placement, scores, grades, or awards. The questions adults ask communicate what we believe matters most.

The goal is not to raise children who never want to win. We want them to set goals, work hard, take risks, and pursue excellence. We want them to feel proud when their preparation leads to success.

We must also raise children who understand that ambition and compassion are not opposites.

In that photograph, two athletes waited to hear whether their names would be called. They had competed against one another, but they did not stand apart. They held hands.

They both made the trial.

I was proud of the result, but I was even more proud of the waiting. The placement will eventually become a memory. The medal, title, score, or announcement will fade. What will remain is the kind of person each child learned to be while pursuing it.

I can only hope these are the people we are creating.

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