Children can be as competitive as adults, at least in Lithuania. Consider the annual baby race across a five-metre-long red carpet track. At the other end, parents lure their children to the finish line using bottles of milk, mobile phones, plush toys and even TV remotes.
The stipulation is that the babies should still be unable to walk. Ten-month-old Mykolas Pociunas crawled adorably to the finish line in 11 seconds, lured by a Lego box. “We thought we wouldn’t make it to the finish line. Just before it he stopped, then sat, then lay down, but finally he saw he needed to crawl to his mother,” Vytautas, the boy’s father, told AFP.
Several toddlers, however, didn’t really feel the need to make it. Some of them sat down during the race, while some never even started.
The competition was started in 1999 by a local radio station to raise awareness about children’s rights. It’s hard to understand how making months-old toddlers compete in a race that they don’t entirely understand serves the purpose.
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