Hey sports fans. If you’ve never met me personally, you may not know that I’m a huge March Madness fan. We get the whole family in on the fun. We hire newborn photographers to take tender artsy black and white photos of Baby’s First Bracket. My two year old has a medal for out-performing his entire extended family. It’s serious business.
If you aren’t having your kids fill out March Madness brackets, you absolutely should be. Many, many studies that I am thinking about conducting show it has amazing benefits on your child’s life and well-being, including boosting their future test scores by 200% and ensuring they don’t marry someone lame who doesn’t like college basketball and being awesome. Usually I am all about being the laid back parent and not stressing about the pressure of living up to impossible parenting expectations, but if you aren’t doing this with your kids, you are probably failing. Do you even have a NCAA basketball Pinterest board? Honestly. You need to teach your children about the thrill of competition, about winning and losing, and about how winning is much better than losing and they should always win or you’ll be very sad and disappointed in thir life choices. C’mon.
Since I can tell you are all now committed to introducing this tradition to your offspring so they will speak your name with tender respect in your twilight years, here are some tips on filling out brackets with small children. Once they become teenagers they should ideally have the life skills to google team records and ESPN articles by themselves, but for the younger ones, a little creativity may be in order.
Babies: If your little whipper snapper has not yet developed the ability and to talk, do not despair. There is no shame in letting them slack off a bit and choose straight seeds. Using an online randomizer is also an acceptable option. Dedicated, on the ball parents may want to go the extra mile and present their babes with two Cheerios corresponding to two teams and see which Cheerio the little tyke goes for. (March Madness can also double as dinner theater! You clever multi-tasking parent, you.)
Toddlers: Toddlers love making choices, so you can use the Cheerio concept here in expanded form. Make flash cards with team mascots and let them pick their favorites. Or if your precious angel isn’t so hot with animal sounds, you can opt instead for team colors or photos of the team coaches. If your tot picks the coach with the most facial hair to go all the way, you might have a sports genius on your hands.
Kids: If your kiddo is old enough to read and fill out their own bracket, give them gentle guidance, but foster a sense of independence and an over-sized confidence in their own poor picks. This will be important if they want to hold their own in adult March Madness pools someday. If they pick North Antartica State College to beat Duke in the first round, praise them for their gutsy sense of style. If they choose 16 seeds for the Final Four because they have the “prettiest” name, be proud of their renegade sensibilities. If your five year old chooses Butler to win it all because “Mom, you said Butt *snicker*”….well, hope he grows out of it and becomes a normal well-adjusted human someday.
You are now equipped to lead your gang in a fun, wholesome, exciting family activity that only ends in tears and trash-talking 82.5% of the time, and will equip your kids with the skills they need to be the craziest person in their office pool for years to come. Just make sure to really rub it in if you totally annihilate them. Kids love that.
