For the past five years I have watched my husband, David, take enormous pleasure in my sons’ ability to play chess. At 6 and 8, they are solid players, in large part because David genuinely enjoys playing, teaching, and learning new moves with them.

On the other hand, I cannot be reliably counted on to set up the pieces on the chessboard. I am that mother who accompanies the boys to their weekend tournaments, hiding my nose in the newspaper to avoid eye contact with frazzled parents who are anxiously awaiting the results of their children’s next round. I am good at buying the boys doughnuts in between rounds, as opposed to other parents, who are good at reviewing their children’s moves.

Don’t get me wrong — I am proud of the boys’ accomplishments. If anything, I’m jealous of David’s capacity to share one of his passions with our children. While I have not learned a single chess move from these weekend matches, I have learned one of the most valuable parenting lessons: Contrary to what common opinion dictates these days, winning and losing matter a lot to most children. Any attempt to reduce the sting of losing by offering up trophies to all participants, is a coverup that conveys to our children just how anxious we adults are at the prospect of our children losing. What kind of message is this?

The timeless truth is that winning feels good and losing feels bad, especially when you, the child, could have done better. Big deal. As opposed to protecting our children from these experiences, we should treat them as a normal part of childhood. By the way, being genuinely good at something is one way to increase one’s self-esteem — and while self-esteem is overrated as the panacea to all childhood problems, excelling in a specific area helps ground children when times are rocky.

I was trying to articulate these thoughts recently to a group of parents who had gathered to discuss different ways to help build self-esteem in their children. Many parents, especially those of adolescents, expressed concern that their children had yet to find their passions. One father spoke of his son’s difficulty in gaining acceptance to a private high school, and felt it was related to the fact that his son wasn’t a teenage superstar.

“My son is a great student. But he’s a late bloomer,” the father said. “He isn’t a budding violinist or hockey star. He doesn’t love making animating cartoons, managing a stock portfolio, or selling knickknacks from his own Web site. He’s just a normal 13-year-old boy.”

It seems we are sending two very conflicting messages to our children. On the one hand, educators, television programmers, and child psychologists have spent the last couple decades telling parents and their children that everyone is special, regardless of abilities or accomplishments. But on the other hand, our children are discovering at an earlier and earlier age the harsh reality that unless they find a singular way to stand out from the crowd, they will be denied opportunities that are based on separating the wheat from the chaff.

The father wanted to know why his son’s academic performance wasn’t convincing enough to get him into several high schools of his choice. “I have a friend on the board of our first-choice school, and she asked the admissions person why my son didn’t get in,” he told me. “She said that nothing really stood out about his application. And you know what — she’s right. At 13, nothing really does stand out yet. But he’s super smart. He had wonderful teacher recommendations. But that wasn’t enough.”

I had plenty of ideas for the parents of these teenage children: A photography course? A little research and then a trip to somewhere nearby that had historical significance — Philadelphia? Gettysburg? Were there any budding writers? Fashion designers? And of course, the most practical advice was to relax and wait. It takes time for children to find their strengths and passions.

But I left the discussion with a nagging worry inside of me. Résumé-building used to enter consciousness sometime in high school — not middle school, or earlier. There seems to me a big difference between 9-year-olds and 17-year-olds worrying about their performance.

“My kids are worried about what math section they’ll be placed in this fall,” a mother of three elementary school students said. “The youngest is 6 years old. Do you think that’s normal? I’m sure my math classes were tracked when I was a kid, but maybe not quite so early. But let me tell you something — I didn’t know what tracking was until I was high school,” she said.

We need to offer a more balanced, consistent message to our children. Doling out a trophy to every 8-year-old is just as dangerous as only rewarding the 13-year-old superstars.

sarasberman@aol.com