Because my children are in their 20s, I didn’t realize until recently how common it has become to end a game or even practice of baseball or soccer with a treat like candy, cookies, or donuts.

To me, that sounds heavenly, since the games can be boring and cold, and boy, do I love donuts. But for the tots? I worry not that they are getting an unhealthy snack. (At some point, we’ve got to choose our concerns.) I worry that they are getting an unhealthy dose of fake fun.

Let me explain.

Giving children candy for participation indicates that the youngsters need  something ELSE to make the activity worthwhile, i.e., that they need an EXTRINSIC reward because the INTRINSIC reward of the activity isn’t enough.

When that’s the case, you have to wonder, why are we having the children do the activity at all? Why are we schlepping them all over town two or three afternoons a week (and once on the weekend!) if it’s not for something they desperately love?

If it’s simply because we want them to study something — how to become a better batter or catcher — OK, then, let’s consider it a lesson, not that different from school: Children are being instructed in a skill.

And we know that when it comes to almost anything that is good for children but also unpleasant, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” So the sugar after soccer is like the pizza party for reading X number of books: necessary for those who would not otherwise choose to read.

But if that hour on the field was really PLAY — which we tend to tell ourselves it is — it would be inherently rewarding. That’s the definition of play — something you do just for fun, period.

Children would run to it and only stop when somehow it got too boring or frustrating. And then they would work to STOP it from being boring or frustrating, learning the skills of creativity, communication and cooperation along the way. 

Being in charge and wanting to have fun, they would CHANGE the game to make it more exciting or engaging.

They can’t, though. Adults are in charge, and the tots are under their control. They are learning a skill that someone wants them to learn via an activity that may be kind of fun, but it is not play.

So the donuts that would get ME to the game end up being the donuts that get CHIDLREN to the game. That means we are forcing our tots to spend their free time in a way that is not free at all.

You often hear people make fun of a culture where everyone gets a trophy — where we ply children with constant praise and unearned glory. Everyone getting a treat is another side of that coin. We are plying children with adult-run, adult-supervised, adult-judged movement.

That’s not the same thing as fun that they make themselves — fun so thrilling that children are laughing and running and don’t want it to end. Fun that requires no uniforms or referees. Fun with sticks, trees, chalk, balls and maybe a cardboard box.

We give children a lot of pre-fab activities, but they are hungry for something more organic.

And then we try to fill the hole with a donut.

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