Education

Is your child overly competitive? Does it cause them emotional distress?

Role Models are the experts when it comes to instilling essential life skills in young children. Louise Treherne, Director of Character Education at Role Models, gives the inside scoop to Cherubs.

You may recognise some of the following traits in your competitive child:

• Wanting to win at all costs, including a willingness to cheat to ensure this outcome • Being rude and unpleasant to their peers, siblings and competitors • An almighty fallout or melt down when they don’t win.

We’re often told competitiveness is healthy, it drives motivation and helps us to strive to succeed. But what about when it causes emotional distress for your child or those around them? The first thing to recognise is that comparison is completely natural and normal. It is completely human to compare, it’s how we are wired. The choice point is around what we choose to do with the comparison. We can either use it to judge ourselves negatively and feel threatened or we can learn to use it for inspiration and connection.

Here are three ideas to consider when supporting your child with an overly competitive approach. 1. Focus on mastery rather than winning

For many children the competitiveness comes from a place of who won? Who was fastest, smartest or earned the most points? Try to help your child focus on the importance of mastery as opposed to instant success. We compete, train and work hard at our craft to develop our mastery and talent, not just to score the points. These empty wins might feel like the most important thing at the moment, but the real challenge is to make sure our skill or talent runs deep.

Your child could look to famous sports people, adults at home and the way they take on board feedback and accept the

‘losses’. The losses teach us more about our performance than the wins.

2. Scarcity & fear vs abundance

Unhealthy competitiveness is often steeped in fear, based on a scarcity mindset. Your success threatens me because I now have to fight harder as there’ll be nothing left for me. If your child’s mindset focuses on there being a limited amount of success available, this is likely to be driving their fear and emotional distress at the prospect of losing. Think about ways to illustrate the point that there is plenty of opportunity for different ways and chances to experience success. There are enough to go round and enough for everyone to have their moment, therefore someone else’s moment of success doesn’t take away from your potential to experience success.

3. The healthiest form of competition

If your child sees competition in everything, take the opportunity to help them consider competition with themselves. Some might argue that the healthiest form of competition is that which we have with ourselves as this helps us reflect on our own progress and focus on how we can improve.

Rather than always comparing their performance against others, find opportunities to help them reflect on their own progress; have they achieved a quicker time, increased their score or developed in some way since their last attempt? Our natural instinct is to compare ourselves to our peers but for many, this can be disheartening rather than motivating. Challenging ourselves reminds us that we’re looking for progress not perfection.

Role Models have a range of courses and sessions – both online and in-person – which help children explore their feelings and worries. In-person 4 and 5 day courses are running throughout the Easter holidays in London. Scan the QR code or visit rolemodels.me to find out more.

We also have a specific online sessions for children aged 5-7 called ‘Is it all About Winning?’ and another for this age category called ‘All the Ways I’m Smart’. For children aged 8-10 we have a session on ‘Emotional Resilience’ and for 11-13 year olds a session on ‘Comparison Culture’.

Louise has a degree in Psychology, 12 years experience as a teacher, including 5 years as a Senior Deputy Head at a London Prep school. She now works as a Professional Coach and Educational Consultant.

A unique new Early Years experience

Outstanding north London Prep School launches new 4+ provision.

Successful north London school group, North Bridge House (NBH) is introducing a new entry point to its high-achieving Prep School at the edge of Regent’s Park. From September 2022, the independent co-ed day school will admit children from age 4, building on its current ‘Outstanding’ provision for 7 to 13-year-olds with Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes.

Renowned for its impressive track record of 11+ and 13+ exam results – celebrating 15 scholarship offers in 2021 – North Bridge House Prep School will continue to prepare children for entry to the UK’s top senior schools, now with a new Early Years curriculum designed specifically around this long-term goal.

“Reception is the start of pupils’ whole school career here at North Bridge House Prep School, and our Early Years curriculum has been mapped around pupils’ educational journey from start to finish,” says Headteacher, James Stenning.

Broad, knowledge-rich and purposeful, North Bridge House Prep School’s Reception curriculum aims to instil in children the knowledge and understanding needed to reach developmental milestones at EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) and beyond.

“Our curricular design is focused on developing depth of understanding and mastery of concepts to readily prepare Reception children for the challenges of the key stages ahead, ensuring each stage of their learning journey is seamless with the next,” says Assistant Head, Penny Lee.

The new Early Years and Key Stage 1 provision in Regent’s Park will expand on NBH Prep School’s specialist, individualised curriculum, maintaining small class sizes and incorporating everything from Philosophy and Forest School, to French, Drama, Music and Sport. Children will benefit from a rich and varied academic and extra-curricular programme from the outset of their education, progressing to a Key Stage 2 curriculum designed to further build cultural literacy.

“Our curriculum is grounded in the strongest evidence about how children learn and retain knowledge in the longterm,” says NBH Prep School Headteacher, James Stenning.

Rather than study humanities as a ‘topic’ - as many primary schools do - we teach Geography and History as discrete subjects at KS2, taking children beyond the basics and equipping them with a deeper contextualised understanding, he explains. The progressive, forward-thinking school prides itself on teaching content to be remembered, not just encountered. For example, rather than simply ‘doing the Romans’, pupils at NBH Prep School learn key terminology relating to that period, so that they not only understand who Julius Caesar was, but are able to place him and the Romans in time in relation to Jesus Christ and 1066.

While the children still get the opportunity to enjoy dressing up as Romans and Greek Gods, by the time they reach Year 6, they are competently answering questions such as: “Civil disobedience was more important than legislation during the civil rights movement”. To what extent do you agree with this statement? The addition of a General Studies course in Year 5 reinforces the school’s unique knowledge-rich curriculum model, with pupils studying modules in Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Film Studies and Art History.

To all this, the school’s new Early Years and KS1 provision will add an exciting opportunity for children to access a progress-enhancing curriculum from the very start of their education. Initiatives such as Forest School and Philosophy will teach the various soft skills that aid higher cognitive abilities, including critical thinking and information processing, while key problem-solving skills will be embedded into all aspects of children’s work.

The school’s new Early Years facilities have been innovatively designed to create multifunctional internal and external teaching spaces and will include the children’s very own rooftop science garden, affording them the opportunity to learn and play amongst nature. With floor-to-ceiling windows, classrooms will facilitate maximum daylight and use sustainable products as much as possible.

North Bridge House Prep School is a popular choice among North London parents who want the option of the UK’s leading destination schools, or a stressfree all-through education which does not compromise on academic excellence (internal students are prioritised for places at the high-achieving NBH Senior Schools). Now accommodating children from the start of their school journey, NBH Prep presents a seamless approach to individually preparing pupils for every path to success.