Participation trophies­: ruining kids one-by-one

Remember in our childhood years when you competed in an activity you either had to be first, second, or third place to win a trophy? Well sadly those days are slowly fading away and now the new trend is giving out participation trophies.
Today, we stress encouraging kids to be all that they can be and not discourage them, I fully agree with that but the way we are doing it now is all wrong. Instead of teaching sportsmanship and how to lose with grace we give them participation trophies, so they won’t have to deal with the agony of losing. This will hurt a child’s development later in life because they won’t know how to accept losing. We see it more now than we ever have.
I’m completely against participation trophies because it also lowers the value of winning, and winning is something that you should wake up and want to do daily. As a former college athlete, I learned all my competiveness in early elementary school basketball leagues and tournaments, because I always wanted the big, shiny trophy. What started out as a simple desire to get a trophy turned into an insatiable desire to win that helped me earn a scholarship to get my degree and further my career. Winning a trophy gave me a sense of accomplishment as a child and I’m scared the new generation won’t have those moments now.
I can honestly say that if participation trophies were around I wouldn’t be the competitor that I am today, because losing would have been easier to deal with because I would’ve still been taking some hardware home with me.
As a parent, I won’t allow my children to have participation trophies because that makes losing acceptable and in the real world that is not the truth. A winning attitude is a healthy attribute as long as sportsmanship and honesty are taught as well.
It is a parent’s duty to prepare their children for the real world and if children grow up thinking that losing is acceptable then the world will be a scary place to live once these children become adults.