The Games We Play

My oldest has always had an element of competition in him.  I remember when he was 3, we enrolled him in a swimming class at the YMCA, and about two weeks into the class, the teacher asked the kids to swim, two by two, the length of the pool.  This wasn’t an easy task since Nathan is pretty much like a barg in the water…or used to be.  The teacher paired him up with his good buddy, Keaton, and said “Okay, now swim”.  Nathan swam his little heart out.  He kicked those legs, scooped with his arms and hands…and yet…he moved only an inch with every three kicks/scoops.  Keaton, on the other hand, seemed to be half fish, and made it to the other side of the pool in almost no time.  By the time Nathan got to the other side of the pool, he was exhausted…and felt defeated.  This is when he decided the logical thing to do was throw a massive tantrum (class was still going on), screaming that he wanted to “win”!  This happened more times that I would like to remember (on the play ground, playing Chutes and Ladders, going up the stairs, getting in his car seat, EVERYTHING was race to Nathan), and being a first time mom…as you always are with your first born (no matter how many subsequent children you have), I wanted to crawl into a hole and out of the fiery red glaring eyes that were starting at me.  I could feel others thoughts “Hmmm lets see what she does…lets watch how she disciplines this…how is Mom going to react.”, all with my perceived judgement that I had done something wrong as a mother.  If I had done things “right”, maybe Nathan wouldn’t be such a sore loser…what was I doing wrong?!

I have since learned that I hadn’t done anything wrong (or maybe I did and I just cannot pin point it), but Nathan just needed to mature.  Now, at 6, he is still competitive, but he seems to have a healthy understanding of winning and losing.  He still wants to win…the only real reason he wants to play sports is to get the trophy at the end of the season (not sure what will happen when he gets to the age that they stop giving a trophy to every team and every player, just because they played), but when losing, he seems to handle it well…and he has become fun to play games with.  He LOVES them!!!  Unfortunately, with a little brother and a little sister, we don’t get to play board games too often as a family (which will hopefully change as the younger ones age)…but when Grand-Dad and GiGi come into town, he revels in their game time together.  I am pretty sure they revel in it too!