Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker James Harrison Harrison created quite a stir this week when he returned his 6 and 8-year-old sons’ sports “participation trophies.”

Harrison posted a picture of the two trophies to his Instagram feed with the caption: “I’m not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe they are entitled to something just because they tried their best.”

That post, which got 19,000 likes,  led to countless debates on social and the mainstream media about whether or not the “everyone’s a winner” mentality is helpful or harmful to kids.

While many parents feel that kids can never get enough encouragement and positive support, others, like Harrison, are clearly afraid that it will somehow spoil his kids’ chances of truly excelling.

It’s true that it can be a rude shock for some kids when reality eventually teaches them that they aren’t rewarded for just showing up, that they are only awarded for accomplishment. Nor does a high school student get put on the honor roll or get into college just by having perfect attendance.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a pediatrician, it’s that it’s not that easy to fool kids. They know perfectly well who ran the fastest or got the most runs and who didn’t, and the trophies just don’t mean that much to them. In fact, when my older daughter was ten, she started calling them her “just because” trophies and stashed them in a corner to collect dust.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of more important issues at the heart of this “trophy or no trophy for just playing” debate. It’s really about deeper parenting issues. It’s about how you feel about entitlement and how to keep kids from feeling too entitled. And it’s about sportsmanship and how to make sure your kids learn the values of good teamwork, sportsmanship, and resilience.

I agree that it’s pointless to reward kids for simply participating, and in a few cases may delay valuable lessons about learning to lose gracefully and resilience. But I disagree with James Harrison that we shouldn’t reward kids for effort and for doing their best. Effort is the key not only in sports but also in whatever we tackle in life. Effort, not just being there. Hard work and repetition at practice, and not just standing around and letting others go for it.

It’s up to us parents to teach our children about the true importance of why they play the game: what effort truly means and how it is different than participation; what sportsmanship is and how to handle both victory and defeat; how to be a good teammate; how to learn and take away something positive from each experience, whether you enjoyed it or not.

The point is that it’s we as parents who shouldn’t be satisfied with the participation trophy. We have hard work to do, the hard work of being a parent who teaches our kids that hard work and doing their best is the road to success and self-satisfaction in life.

That’s how we’ll deserve our own participation medal as engaged parents!