Colter said, "Good game" and shook my hand this morning, after I beat him in a rematch of "Spite and Malice."
You could see the effort on his face, and just before he shook my hand, you could see the effort in his whole body, as he abruptly pushed back from the table and said, "That's not fair! You always win!" The fact that he could recover enough to show good sportsmanship really impressed me. Especially because he is a competitor in a competitive family.
When Gary plays with Colter, he never lets him win. Any victory is truly deserved. I often will let Colter win, and was prepared to do so this morning to show what a good sport I could be, but the cards got away from me.
When Colter played team sports, he always kept score, even when his coach and team didn't. He's always aware of his classroom ranking, even though he doesn't officially receive one. And once or twice I've heard him compare the size of our house to his friends' houses.
In this morning's handshake, I saw a sign of optimism, a sign that perhaps the scale Colter uses to weigh his wins and losses will be balanced with compassion -- for himself and for others.
My DD is ultra competitive! I think that it's a good thing, but at the same time, it can be a bad thing that needs to be watched.
She's on a soccer team, and I've noticed that she gets very upset at these kids on her team when she sees them not playing strategically correctly or not following the coach's instructions, thus causing their team to "lose", even though they don't even keep score.
At one game, one of the boys had a hard time figuring out where he was supposed to be kicking the ball. He kept kicking the ball towards our goal, instead of the opposing team's goal. Boy, that infuriated my DD! She kept shouting at him that he was kicking the ball in the WRONG direction, and that he was supposed to be kicking the ball to the OTHER side! I had to have a little talk with her afterwards about trying to be more patient and compassionate towards her team members because they were trying as best as they could.
Posted by: betty | September 23, 2004 at 03:28 PM
Tony is just getting into the "I win" stage. Many duel events are a race to him, much to my chagrin when it comes to coloring. We are not into team sports, and Tony will probably not know what is it like to be into team sports. It's really a non-issue in our house.
Posted by: VJ | September 23, 2004 at 12:22 AM
How impressive. Great job Colter!! Kayla is into swimming and gym class. Both places focus on team effort and team achievements, so that helps us a little. Sometimes Kayla will be more competitive than others. It funny, she likes to hang out with kids either younger or older than her, so there is a lot of competition there. Other times they will try to out do themselves and see what they can acomplish.
Posted by: Nikki | September 22, 2004 at 02:36 PM