Every community has its version of them — the spelling bee, the Chidon HaTanach, the “who can memorize the most mishnayos” competitions that schools run with the best of intentions. Kids study harder than they ever have in their lives. Parents beam with pride. And then, Rav Shlomo Wolbe noticed something almost nobody else was tracking: what happens to these kids after they win.
Rav Wolbe observed that during the competition itself, the drive to win does exactly what it’s supposed to do — it pushes learning to a remarkable intensity. Kids who normally dawdle over their work suddenly study with real seriousness. On the surface, it looks like a total success story. But Wolbe kept following these children past the ceremony, past the trophy, into the months and years afterward. And what he found should give every well-meaning parent and educator pause: the project never actually finished. These same children, almost without exception, stopped learning with anywhere near that level of seriousness once the competition ended.
Why would winning actually damage a child’s long-term motivation? Rav Wolbe’s answer cuts to a core principle of middos: the honor a child receives from winning creates a kind of blindness. The attention, the applause, the status of being “the one who memorized the most” becomes the goal itself, replacing the love of the material. The child’s self-esteem becomes tied to external validation rather than to the quiet, internal satisfaction of mastering something. Once that validation disappears — and it always does, because there’s always a next competition with a new winner — the motivation disappears right along with it.
This doesn’t mean competitions are inherently evil or that no child should ever be recognized for achievement. It means parents need to watch for a specific warning sign: is my child’s sense of self-worth growing from the process of learning, or from the prize at the end? One way to find out is to ask a simple question after the big day is over and the excitement has faded: “What was your favorite part of studying for this?” A child anchored in the material will usually have an answer about content — a story, an idea, a part that surprised them. A child anchored only in the win will usually talk about the moment they were announced as the winner, and precious little else.
Practically, here is what Rav Wolbe’s observation suggests for any parent whose child is entering a competitive program: separate the praise from the placement. Praise the hours of effort, the specific improvement, the content itself — do this constantly, win or lose. Save your most enthusiastic reaction for the process, not the result. And after the competition ends, make a deliberate point of continuing the learning in some low-stakes way, even for ten minutes a few times a week, so the child experiences that the subject matters independent of any trophy. That’s the only way the fire Rav Wolbe watched flicker out in his students gets to keep burning once the applause stops.
If you’d like more of Rabbi Kelemen’s teachings from Rav Wolbe on raising children with a stable, internal sense of self-worth, join the inner circle at lawrencekelemen.com.
This blog was co-written with Artificial Intelligence.