I don’t even see it as tough, just a bit of clowning, but of course it all depends on the child’s reaction, and that’s famously hard to predict. I would have gone for it, knowing that, like many of my adventures in parenting, it could go completely wrong.
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Ahem…
…boomer here.
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Do you want a participation medal?
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If you please…
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At this moment, I cannot begin to calculate how much more I appreciate my long-lost, but very loving grandparents. JHFC.
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From the same people who think “Eat it! There’s children starving in Africa!” would make me want to do anything except send my dinner to Africa.
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You boomers and your participation medals! 
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It weren’t us, participation medals.
But I’ll have one if I can get it.
We are perhaps the parents of those what
initiated the participation medals.
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I know… it was a joke at the expense of millennials… we didn’t get participation medals either, unless you count two houses from divorced parents and keys to let ourselves into both after school! Or hand outs on satanic panic and stranger danger!
That would have started with boomers, too since it was very early millennials? Post my gen, though.
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Boomers had a lot of participation medals.
Sometimes different generations have different names for similar things. You know, letters vs. emails, or husband vs partner, or a cup of java vs. lattes…
Participation medals? I think most Boomers called those, “houses”.
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I think I was almost in my teens before they annexed my age-group as part of the Boomers. I’d be pissed off, but most of “they” are probably dead.
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Well, except I have one boomer parent in the grave and another who is not exactly a home owner… so maybe not all boomers?
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Wasn’t growing up in the late 70’s/mid 80’s just awesome?
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Well I had a boring family that stayed married but letting myself in from 5th grade on. Once I was in high school I was making the occasional dinner when the parents were going to be late coming home.
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To be fair, my parents did not divorce until I was an adult… still, we didn’t get shit for participation trophies, and we often graduated into economic trouble, thanks in part to Reagan… but we get to hear how entitled we are as Gen Xers…
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And my parents are Silent Generation and not Boomers but not sure how much that makes for a difference.
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I don’t know? Generations are one of those social constructs that we’re told that matters? Not actually sure if it does, though.
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IMO, like most things that are arbitrary, generations are meaningless constructs. It’s just a way for humans to do one of the things we love - categorization in order to find patterns where none exist.
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I realized something the other day, while explaining the Thanksgiving tradition my sister and I had: no kid today would have the same. Why? Because my parents left us alone for a couple of weeks each October. We stayed with neighbors when we were younger, then the neighbors just checked in on us. We got ourselves to school, fed ourselves, and went out for Chinese food for Thanksgiving dinner, because neither of us felt like making the traditional meal just four the two of us.
Today, our parents would be arrested for neglect. I think if there’s anything that fits as a generational difference between Gen-X and those who came later, that would be yet (yes, some boomers were left alone, too).
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