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Is Too Much Competition Hurting Your Child’s Confidence? · Raising Daughters

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  Speaker 1: Hello folks. Doctor Tim Jordan back here with you with
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  Speaker 1: a brand new podcast, and this one is inspired by
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  Speaker 1: watching the news, watching kids in this frenetic world where
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  Speaker 1: everything is about being the best and being on the
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  Speaker 1: best team and winning a national championship and having the
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  Speaker 1: best grades and going to a top tier college and
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  Speaker 1: on and on and on, and the stress and the
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  Speaker 1: pressure on kids today. I feel it. I feel it
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  Speaker 1: on the girls who I counsel in my counsing practice.
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  Speaker 1: I hear it, and I feel it from the girls
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  Speaker 1: who come to my weekend retreats in my summer camps.
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  Speaker 1: I did we Can retreat recently with great school girls,
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  Speaker 1: and they were so stressed about all that stuf. They
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  Speaker 1: talked about it really intensely. I think this culture really
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  Speaker 1: pushes that that competition thing and survival of the fittest
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  Speaker 1: and all that. Sometimes they even mentioned Darwin, but you
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  Speaker 1: know Darwin's theory of what they say, you know, survival
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  Speaker 1: of the fittest. But one of the things I've read
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  Speaker 1: in several places now is it that Darwin didn't mention
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  Speaker 1: survival of the fittest. He describes something called natural selection,
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  Speaker 1: which is often misunderstood as being selfish being competitive, But
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  Speaker 1: what he actually seemed to mean was survival of the
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  Speaker 1: best adapted to an environment, which frequently favors cooperation, social bonding,
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  Speaker 1: and mutualism. While competition for resources does occur, cooperation often
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  Speaker 1: proves a superior evolutionary strategy for survival and reproduction, particularly
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  Speaker 1: in social species. So that's interesting and I never knew that.
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  Speaker 1: I also read that here's here's some other words that
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  Speaker 1: that Darwin talked about in his Origin of the Species.
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  Speaker 1: He talked about things such as being useful to the community,
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  Speaker 1: useful to the social community, profitable to the community, advantageous
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  Speaker 1: to the community, for the benefit of the community, for
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  Speaker 1: the benefit of the whole community, and things like for
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  Speaker 1: the good of the community. He mentioned those a lot
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  Speaker 1: in his writings. That's not competition, that's that's a whole
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  Speaker 1: different thing. So let me give you some examples from
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  Speaker 1: nature and also from humankind where cooperation really does serve
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  Speaker 1: to benefit the whole species. I'm gonna start with some
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  Speaker 1: of my favorite trees, aspens and redwoods. My wife and
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  Speaker 1: I have been up to John Muir Woods twice, also
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  Speaker 1: to the Redwood National Forest up in the Northeast. I
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  Speaker 1: love those trees. And also I love the aspens that
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  Speaker 1: are all over the place, especially in Colorado. I've been
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  Speaker 1: there a couple times in the fall when they changed
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  Speaker 1: to golden ugh. One of the most beautiful sights Colorado.
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  Speaker 1: Aspen trees are usually found in clusters, are groves, they
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  Speaker 1: call them. That's because aspens can multiply from the roots.
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  Speaker 1: They send up lots of new shoots every year, and
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  Speaker 1: these become saplings that grow quickly and make new baby
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  Speaker 1: aspens of their own. In some groves, all the trees
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  Speaker 1: may actually be connected by their roots. It's as if
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  Speaker 1: they are one tree. Love that, love it, love it,
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  Speaker 1: love it. Another tree, the giant California redwood. It can
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  Speaker 1: tower over three hundred feet into the sky. You know,
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  Speaker 1: we've seen pictures you probably have on the news about
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  Speaker 1: tunnels being carved into the trunks, wide enough to drive
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  Speaker 1: a car through. It seems they would require the deepest
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  Speaker 1: of roots to anchor them against the strong winds because
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  Speaker 1: they're so tall, But instead their roots are actually very shallow.
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  Speaker 1: They spread out in search of surface water, and they
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  Speaker 1: reach out in all directions, intertwining with the roots of
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  Speaker 1: other redwoods and lock together. In this way, all the
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  Speaker 1: trees support each other during wind and storms. Love it,
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  Speaker 1: love it, Love it. A beautiful example of cooperation in nature.
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  Speaker 1: Here's another fun example. It's about penguins. Emperor penguins live
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  Speaker 1: in Antarctica, well, the coldest continents on the planet, may
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  Speaker 1: be the coldest continent on the planet, excuse me, And
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  Speaker 1: they survived by depending on each other. In the wintertime,
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  Speaker 1: when the pemperature is well below zero and the wind
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  Speaker 1: gusts are driving huge snow drifts, they survive by banding
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  Speaker 1: together tightly with their back to the wind in a
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  Speaker 1: big clump. The body heat of other birds warms them up,
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  Speaker 1: and only the last row of birds endures that blasts
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  Speaker 1: from the wind. But every now and then the back
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  Speaker 1: row of birds moves into the middle and the other
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  Speaker 1: birds rotate out for their turn on the outside. So
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  Speaker 1: by depending on each other and taking turns, they survive
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  Speaker 1: the winter in order to thrive in the following summer.
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  Speaker 1: They've got it right, don't they. Cooperation, thinking about everybody,
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  Speaker 1: keeping other people's needs in mind, supporting each other. I
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  Speaker 1: wonder if you hear a lot of that going on
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  Speaker 1: from your daughter in middle school. Here's another one from nature.
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  Speaker 1: Consider honey bees. I've a neighbor who raises honey She
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  Speaker 1: has hives in her backyard, and so I've been buying
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  Speaker 1: it now for the last several years. I love it
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  Speaker 1: because it's so good for your immune system. Plus it's
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  Speaker 1: just good. Excuse me. It's interesting that when you look
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  Speaker 1: at honey bees, the worker bees never reproduce. They spend
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  Speaker 1: their entire lives helping their sisters and their queen bee
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  Speaker 1: have babies. From a selfish standpoint, this makes no sense, right,
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  Speaker 1: but from an evolutionary perspective, it's brilliant. By helping their
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  Speaker 1: relatives reproduce, worker bees ensure that many copies of their
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  Speaker 1: own genes survive, even if they don't personally have offspring
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  Speaker 1: of their own. So honey bees have found a way
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  Speaker 1: to cooperate and to work with each other. Let me
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  Speaker 1: give you a couple examples of human cooperation, because we're
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  Speaker 1: not just honey bees and penguins aren't the only ones
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  Speaker 1: that can cooperate and be there for each other. I've
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  Speaker 1: heard a story a while back. I had this in
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  Speaker 1: one of my podcasts in the past, but hopefully, hopefully
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  Speaker 1: it's still a good one for you. Here again, But
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  Speaker 1: an anthropologist who. He proposed a game to a group
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  Speaker 1: of young children who belonged to a tribe from a
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  Speaker 1: so called civilization way. It deepened in the African a jungle.
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  Speaker 1: He placed a basket of fruit under a tree. He
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  Speaker 1: told the kids that whoever got to at first could
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  Speaker 1: have all the fruit in the basket. So he lined
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  Speaker 1: them up and then he gave them the signal to go,
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  Speaker 1: and to his surprise, excuse me, the kids all joined
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  Speaker 1: hands and ran to the tree together. When they reached
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  Speaker 1: the basket, they all sat down to enjoy the fruit
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  Speaker 1: as a group. The scientists couldn't believe it. He said,
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  Speaker 1: why had you done that? Why did you run together
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  Speaker 1: instead of racing to see who get to the tree
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  Speaker 1: first need all the fruit? And one child spoke up.
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  Speaker 1: The child said ubuntu, and what does ubuntu mean? The
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  Speaker 1: anthrop anthropologist asked the kids, and the kids said, how
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  Speaker 1: can one of us be happy if all the others
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  Speaker 1: are sad? Unfortunately, that's a different message than I think
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  Speaker 1: our kids are getting in this era of club sports,
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  Speaker 1: select sports, national championships when you're eight years old, all
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  Speaker 1: that stuff. I tell that story, by the way, in
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  Speaker 1: our camp, sometimes the kids in grade school, middle school,
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  Speaker 1: or high school, and they love the story and they
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  Speaker 1: all wish that their schools and the kids in their
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  Speaker 1: school acted that way. Our spacit Desmond Tutu might say
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  Speaker 1: that peace can be found in the African concept of Ubuntu.
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  Speaker 1: It says a concept that we have in our Bantu
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  Speaker 1: languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person.
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  Speaker 1: It means that we are people through other people. We
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  Speaker 1: cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence,
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  Speaker 1: We are made for family. When you have Ubuntu, you
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  Speaker 1: embrace other people. You're generous, compassionate. If the world had
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  Speaker 1: more Ubuntu, there would be no wars. The powerful would
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  Speaker 1: help the weak, and that is where peace is to
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  Speaker 1: be found. I wonder if our leaders could use a
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  Speaker 1: lesson in Ubuntu, as this world is pretty angry right now.
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  Speaker 1: I love having that concept introduced to kids so they
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  Speaker 1: have a sense of what it means, and also to
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  Speaker 1: talk how can we bring more of that into our classroom.
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  Speaker 1: How can we bring that into our teams, into our families.
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  Speaker 1: Here's one way to involve it with your family's last
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  Speaker 1: story for today. One Sunday morning, a father was trying
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  Speaker 1: to read the paper, but he kept being interrupted by
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  Speaker 1: his young daughter. She wanted him to play with her.
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  Speaker 1: He was getting kind of frustrated and he was about
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  Speaker 1: to scold her when he got an idea. He saw
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  Speaker 1: a picture of the globe in the newspaper he was reading,
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  Speaker 1: so he cut it out and he cut it into
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  Speaker 1: small pieces. They threw it on the floor, and he
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  Speaker 1: told her he would play with her as soon as
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  Speaker 1: she could put the puzzle together, thinking that would take
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  Speaker 1: her at least, you know, fifteen to twenty minutes. So
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  Speaker 1: he was shocked. With just a few minus latters, she said, okay, Dad, ready,
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  Speaker 1: and to his amazement, the puzzle was back together, and
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  Speaker 1: the dad looked at his daughter. He said, how could
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  Speaker 1: you possibly do that so quickly? And the little girl
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  Speaker 1: said something very wise. She said, Daddy, it was easy.
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  Speaker 1: I noticed before you cut it up that there was
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  Speaker 1: a picture of a family on the back, and it
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  Speaker 1: was really easy to put them together. And I knew
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  Speaker 1: that once the family was together, the world would come together.
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  Speaker 1: At the same time, all of us have the ability
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  Speaker 1: to start someplace to bring more peace into this world.
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  Speaker 1: We may not be in world meetings with heads and
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  Speaker 1: presidents of other countries, and it can start with something
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  Speaker 1: as simple as that. That father's story. It can start
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  Speaker 1: with teaching your kids about Ubuntu. It can be about
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  Speaker 1: teaching your kids about cooperation, resolving conflicts peacefully. There's lots
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  Speaker 1: of things we can do at the elemental level, not
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  Speaker 1: elemental in a negative way, but like just where we
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  Speaker 1: live day by day. We don't have to be the
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  Speaker 1: head of a country to affect what's going on because
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  Speaker 1: those kind of actions spread. They're like ripples. If your
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  Speaker 1: daughter goes to school and practices ubantu, and if she's cooperative,
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  Speaker 1: and if she stands up for people who are teasing
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  Speaker 1: other people or leading people out, those create ripples. They do,
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  Speaker 1: I know they do. I've worked in schools for thirty
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  Speaker 1: five years. I've worked in summer camps for thirty six years.
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  Speaker 1: We can retreat thirty six years. I've worked with kids
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  Speaker 1: a lot, and it doesn't take but one kid sometimes
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  Speaker 1: to start some ripples, just like it doesn't take but
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  Speaker 1: one adult sometimes to start a ripple. So Darwin's theory
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  Speaker 1: really really was about cooperation but working together for the
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  Speaker 1: good of the community, and I think we need more
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  Speaker 1: of that kind of thinking in our world today. So
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  Speaker 1: use the example of aspen trees and redwoods whose root
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  Speaker 1: systems are all intertwined to help them all grow better
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  Speaker 1: and to survive. Think about those penguins huddled up in
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  Speaker 1: a tight circle in the arctic cold air and going
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  Speaker 1: in and out of the of the front lines, if
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  Speaker 1: you will to take care of each other so they
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  Speaker 1: could get through the winter and survive and thrive in
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  Speaker 1: the spring. Consider honey bees. Those worker bees never reproduce,
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  Speaker 1: but they spend their whole lives making sure that the
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  Speaker 1: queen is taken care of because that helps their genes
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  Speaker 1: to survive too. Think about ubuntu about those kids who said,
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  Speaker 1: how can one of us be happy if all the
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  Speaker 1: rest are sad? And think about that little girl who
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  Speaker 1: put that puzzle together. Because if we start with our families,
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  Speaker 1: if you start with your parenting, if you start in
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  Speaker 1: your home, it has an effect that will affect the
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  Speaker 1: way your kids show up when they leave your home.
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  Speaker 1: And that's how ripples start. Too much emphasis in this
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  Speaker 1: day and age on being the best you know, be
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  Speaker 1: on keeping up with the joneses, the competition, the national championships,
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  Speaker 1: top colleges are bust so much energy around all that.
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  Speaker 1: Enough on the things I just talked about with these stories,
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  Speaker 1: so you can help get your kids focused on those
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  Speaker 1: things by not uh you know, following everybody else and
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  Speaker 1: make your own path as a family. I appreciate you
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  Speaker 1: stopping by here. Check out my website at www dot
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  Speaker 1: dr tim Jordan dot com. I'll have show notes on
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  Speaker 1: there with some uh with probably one or two links
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  Speaker 1: to some previous podcasts I've done that that have some
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  Speaker 1: you know, related topics if you will. Also, you can
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  Speaker 1: look at the website for information about all the things
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  Speaker 1: that I do, the books and the articles and all
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  Speaker 1: the podcasts I've done, and my weekend retreats. Summer camps
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  Speaker 1: are coming up before long, so check it out, and
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  Speaker 1: uh hopefully I will see you and all your daughter
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  Speaker 1: at campus summer. Take care and practice more cooperation and Ubuntu.
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  Speaker 1: I'll be back here in a week with the brand
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  Speaker 1: new podcast. Thank you so much for stopping by. An