What Do We Actually Want This Experience to Produce in Our Kids?

There are a lot of conversations happening in the livestock industry right now. They keep bringing me back to one question.

What do we actually want this experience to produce in our kids?

Our family spent a lot of years showing livestock. We came into it knowing almost nothing, became competitive, won things we once never imagined winning, and eventually made the choice to step away from something we genuinely loved.

Now that my kids are older, something has changed about the way I look back on those years.

The older my kids get, the less I think about what they won.

I think more about whether they learned to show up when nobody was watching. Whether they learned to care for something that depended on them. Whether they learned to lose and keep working. Whether they learned how to win without forgetting who they were. Whether they learned to help someone they might compete against an hour later. Whether they learned to do the right thing when another way would have been easier.

Those are the things I hope they took with them.

The question looks different from the other side

When you're actively showing, there are obvious ways to measure a season.

Placings. Banners. Buckles. Grand Champions. Goals reached. Shows won or lost.

Those things aren't meaningless. They're part of competition, and some of them become wonderful family memories.

But time changes what feels important.

Years later, you're less likely to care exactly where an animal placed at a particular show than you are about whether your kid learned to work, take responsibility, handle disappointment, make good decisions, and treat people well.

The banners don't become meaningless.

They just become part of the story instead of the whole story.

Winning is not the problem

I want to be clear about something before going any further.

We wanted to win, badly.

We worked hard for the banners our family brought home, and I'm still proud of them.

Competition gave our kids something worthwhile. A difficult goal. A reason to improve. Standards to work toward. The experience of preparing under pressure. The disappointment of falling short. The satisfaction of finally seeing work pay off.

We don't need to diminish competition to make room for character.

Maybe wanting to win as badly as we did is exactly why I think this question matters.

Values are easy to talk about when nothing important is at stake.

Competition gives kids a chance to find out whether those values still hold when something is.

It's easy to talk about sportsmanship until you lose to someone you badly wanted to beat.

The question isn't whether kids should want to win.

It's what they learn about themselves and the people around them while they're trying.

The experience is teaching something either way

We often say livestock builds character.

I'd push back on that slightly.

Livestock doesn't automatically produce responsibility, integrity, humility, resilience, or good sportsmanship simply because a child owns an animal or walks into a show ring.

It gives them repeated opportunities to practice those things.

An animal still needs to be cared for on an inconvenient day.

The work still has to happen after a disappointing show.

They have to decide how they treat the person who beat them.

They have to decide how they treat everyone else when they're the one who won.

Sometimes somebody else needs help, even if that person will be a competitor later that day.

There is work that needs done when nobody is watching.

And eventually there are moments when doing the right thing and doing the easy thing that helps you win aren't the same.

Those are the opportunities.

And through all of it, kids are watching the adults around them.

They're learning from what we praise.

They're learning from what we excuse.

They're learning from what we're willing to do to win.

They're learning from how we talk about competitors after the show.

They're learning from how animals are treated.

They're learning what we actually value, not just what we tell them we value.

The experience is teaching something either way.

That means we can't simply put kids in livestock projects and assume the good lessons will follow. The adults around them help shape what they learn from it.

So what do we hope they carry with them?

I hope they learn responsibility and work ethic by showing up because something depends on them, not because someone is applauding.

I hope they learn stewardship by understanding that the animal itself matters, not just what it can accomplish in the ring.

I hope they learn integrity by doing the right thing even when another choice would be easier or more advantageous.

I hope they learn resilience by discovering that disappointment can hurt without becoming the end of the story.

I hope they learn how to compete without allowing competition to decide how they treat people.

How to lose without becoming bitter.

How to win without making someone else feel small.

How to ask for help.

How to offer it.

And I hope they learn that some of the people standing across the ring from them may also become the people who help them, teach them, encourage them, and remain part of their lives long after the class is over.

Those things aren't as easy to photograph as a banner.

But they're a lot more useful once the show is over.

Our answer should change how we define a good season

If we believe those things matter, then our definition of success has to make room for them.

A good season can still include winning.

But it is worth also asking whether a kid became more capable than they were when the season started.

Did they take more ownership of their animal?

Did they learn from a mistake?

Did they handle disappointment better than they did a year ago?

Did they become someone another exhibitor could count on?

Did they learn to ask for help and to offer it?

Did they continue caring for their animal well even after the outcome they wanted was no longer possible?

Did they become more trustworthy?

Those aren't consolation prizes for kids who didn't win.

They are part of what the experience was supposed to produce in the first place.

And if we say character matters more than banners, our choices have to make that true, especially when something we really want is on the line.

Someday the banners come down

Showing livestock feels like such a big part of life while you're living it.

Then one day it isn't.

The kids grow up. The animals are gone. The show clothes get packed away. The banners end up somewhere other than the bedroom and barn wall. The backdrop pictures become photographs from another part of life.

But your kids take themselves with them.

That's where the return on all those years eventually shows up.

Not only in what they know about livestock, but in how they work. How they treat people. How they respond when something doesn't go their way. How they care for things entrusted to them. What they do when nobody is checking.

I'm proud of what our kids accomplished.

I wouldn't erase the competitive part of those years. It was part of what our family loved about showing.

But with some distance from it now, the thing I most hope survived those years isn't hanging on a wall.

It's in who they became.

I hope the early mornings mattered. I hope the losses mattered as much as the wins. I hope doing the right thing when nobody was watching stayed with them.

Because eventually they had to leave the show ring and take whatever those years taught them into the rest of their lives.

The banners matter for a season. Who they become has to matter longer.

Maybe that's the question worth coming back to whenever the rest of this gets loud:

What do we actually want this experience to produce in our kids?