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Look, I’m a pretty competitive person. I was a cheerleader, for heaven’s sake. The huz and I are competitive with each other. We love competitive sports. And I have sisters. Two of them. Competition is in my blood.
So, when I was at the pool the other day with the kids, I wasn’t sure what to make of this conversation, started by another boy with my son. I didn’t want to let it bother me. But it did. Suddenly, I was feeling anti-competitive.
Can you stand on this step and keep your head up? Can you move down to the next one? Can you? Can you? I can! On each step, Big tried to keep his head above water.
Next the boy needed to know numbers. How tall are you?
I don’t know, Big nonchalantly replied. Mom? How big am I?
Hmmm. I know you’re bigger than 40… maybe 43, 44? I responded.
44! Yeah! 44! That’s right! I’m 44!
44 feet?! 44 feet?! That’s impossible. There’s no way you could be 44 feet! Because 44 feet would be bigger than the ceiling. It would be bigger than the building.
Big glanced at me. Inches. I told him.
Inches, said big. Not feet. Inches.
Oh. Because 44 feet. That’s just really, really big. So. What about flips? Can you do flips?
Yeah.
Because I can do flips really well. Watch.
Yeah. I can do them, too. Watch.
Yeah. What about Butterfly? I bet you can’t do butterfly. No one can do butterfly. Its really hard. Its like, impossible.
I can do butterfly, replied Big. The boy looked towards his swim coach.
No. You can’t really, can you? No one can.
Big shrugged. Both boys looked at me. Can he really do butterfly? asked the boy.
Well. Yes. He can.
Wow. What about running? Are you fast?… I bet I can splash water higher and farther!
I listened to this competition and wished I had brought Middle’s copy of Duck, Duck, Goose
And more than anything, seeing competition as a parent makes me wish we could all just sit back and smell the flowers. Life was so nice when others’ opinions didn’t matter, when the kids could live life as they wanted to and not worry so much about impressing others. I recognize that competition is healthy. And something children need to learn young rather than old. Still, it hurts to see how much they focus on competition and impressing others.
I know… its coming. If I think this is bad just wait til adolescence. Because it’ll be a million times worse. I know that.
So, please. Offer advice. Tell me what you do to teach your kids to be healthily competitive but not live by it. Tell me how they learn to remain the good, sweet, innocent kidlets they are today. Because I don’t want to lose that.
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Well, I have no little ones so I make it a policy to not give out advice on raising little ones. But I do remember being little and hating the kid competitions. Usually I would go along for a few turns of matching and one upping each other and then I would just let the other kid “win”. “oh you can touch your toes and sing yankee doodle? wow, yeah I can’t do that” That would usually be the end of it. I was definitely more of a smell the flowers, let’s just chill kid. If the kids are ok and liking the competition I would say leave it as long as it isn’t mean, but if you notice they aren’t into it maybe let them know it is ok to just let the other kid win and move on.
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i don’t have an exact answer, but where i work, i help develop kids’ athletic abilities by doing sports performance. we have a few kids who love to point out when someone else does something wrong. it’s very challenging to tell that kid to “not tattle”… we don’t point out other people’s faults or mistakes.
i think, like you said, competition is healthy. and i just think that we need to teach our kids that we shouldn’t “brag” in front of other people. teach them that everyone has different talents and skills and just because someone doesn’t run as fast as you, doesn’t mean that they can’t do other things well.
i don’ tknow. it’s tough but keep working on it!
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Twitter: justprecious
says:
“just because someone doesn’t run as fast as you, doesn’t mean that they can’t do other things well.”
That’s so important and such a great thing to teach kids.
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