Lessons learned from a little ‘bling’

INDIANOLA, Neb. - County fair and 4-H season is back again already. For the most part, I believe it’s another good tool to teach any number of skills that children can use now and in the future.

One year, our youngest daughter didn’t make it to many actual horse 4-H meetings due to us parents having too much work to do and her not being allowed to drive a truck /trailer full of horses to McCook. By this age, she was already an accomplished horse trainer. At the county fair, I saw one of her leaders and several kids whispering and pointing at us but did not know what it was about.

The first class was showmanship which she normally won, but on this occasion, the judge decided to make an example of her and pointed out that she had “Bling” on her jeans! New that year in the new rule book, which we didn’t know about, was “no bling allowed”! So the judge decreed that she was being dropped ribbon placings because she hadn’t read it. Which also affected the “overall” placing at the end of the show.

I often wondered why the leaders, parents, or other kids hadn’t given us a heads up instead of embarrassing her in the class. It taught her not to expect the best of other competitors. We would have warned others if we had known, as we have never been afraid of competition.

On another note, our children did learn how to present themselves in competition and develop a great work ethic not only dealing with livestock but also keeping their projects on track with a timeline and they all became good assets to our society.

One has to tell kiddos that more times than not, winners are picked with one person’s opinion, not a whole panel of judges, and even though they may have worked very hard on their project, that one person may not like it.

Ironically failure can help certain personalities try that much harder, but others decide they can’t take criticism so therefore no longer want to do things. I think that is when parents should encourage their children to work on things that they could do differently next time.

Have a good one!