AP) -- Penny Grossman cringes each time a student mentions a birthday party during class at her Boston, Massachusetts-area preschool. The rule there, and at a growing number of America's schools, is that parties and play-dates shouldn't be discussed unless every child in the room is invited.

Gone are the days when a kindergartner dropped a handful of party invites in the classroom cubbyholes of their closest buddies. Today, if anyone is excluded the invitations can't be handed out at school.

The idea that protecting kids from rejection is crucial to safeguarding their self-esteem has gained momentum in recent years.

Take Valentine's Day: At some schools, a second-grader can't offer paper valentines or heart-shaped candies to a short list of pals and secret crushes anymore. They give cards to everyone or no one at all.

Or sports: In many towns, scorekeeping no longer happens at soccer or softball games played by kids under 8 or 9. Win or lose, every player in the league gets a trophy at the season's end.

As with many child-rearing trends, some parents and educators see wisdom where others spot foolishness. Many see a mixture of both.

"You try and do things gently when they're little because it is still hard," says Grossman, who is raising two teenagers while teaching preschool. "But I think this is a problem, and it's a growing one, because kids grow up and have this inflated sense of self-worth. Whether they earn anything, it's always a trophy. They have no sense that you have to work hard for some things."

Susan Reel, a mother of two living in Madison, Connecticut, doesn't see a downside to inviting the whole class to a birthday party.

"When they're in first and second grade, their friends are so day-to-day. It's who they played with yesterday," she says. "So to pick one or the other is shortsighted on the parents' part."

She believes that schools are paying more attention to children's feelings because they understand better today the damage done when a small group of kids is consistently excluded.

"When we went to school, people were bullied. Now we know kids have a much greater instance of suicide and depression when they've been bullied," she says.

Jolie Nichols, also a mother of two, disagrees. She believes kids in her Minneapolis neighborhood would benefit from competing for a trophy or handling a mild bit of rejection.

"It's just natural and it's realistic to have to deal with these things," she says. At her 7-year-old daughter's gymnastics class, everyone receives the same ribbon or medal for their performance, regardless of how well they've done.

Rather than imparting self-esteem, some experts believe this gives kids an unhealthy sense of entitlement.

"Self-esteem comes from those feelings you have about yourself for a job well done, for when you have achieved something," says Dr. Georgette Constantinou, administrative director of pediatric psychiatry at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio. "It's not something you pour into your children."

She feels that many parents aren't equipping their kids to manage basic challenges.

"How do you expect them to handle life's big bumps if they haven't experienced the little ones?" she asks.

No one disagrees that disappointment is real: There are contests we all lose, parties we're excluded from. But what motivates so many parents to postpone that reality until their children reach the age of 10 or beyond?

For one thing, kids' lives are so tightly scheduled today that we're enrolling smaller and smaller children in organized activities. It may be true that 6-year-olds aren't ready to handle losing a T-Ball championship; a generation ago, 6-year-olds wouldn't have even been playing team sports.

Parents may also be reacting to their own economic and career stress by trying to protect their kids from it.

"This group is balancing things that previous generations haven't had to balance," says Constantinou. "The number of women in the work force is phenomenal, probably the largest since the war years, so you have a lot more stressed parents."

Busy parents turn to schools and other care-givers for help, says Mike Sanchez, co-owner of Camp Innovation, a Houston, Texas-area day camp. It does offer competitive games, but also gives each camper an award each week.

"I tell counselors, always find something specific about the kids," Sanchez says. "It helps with parents who say they may not be cleaning at home or working well with a brother or sister. We work on it, and then give them an award for best spirit of the week, best cleaner of the week."

Critics of the trend worry about a generation of kids who haven't experienced rejection or failure -- especially compared with countries such as China and Japan, where a focus on competition defines the lives of many children.

Learning to compete, says Nichols, is vital. "It sets them up for real life things like a job," she says. "It helps people develop their skills."

that's already a problem. It's just going to get worse. Alot of people come out of high school (and even college) now expecting stuff to be handed to them, or stuff to be easy, or whatever. And they're wrong. So they fail absolutely and completely at everything they do until they learn to really apply themselves.

It's sad. The world is a hard, rough place. Don't screw the kids up by making them think otherwise.