Part of growing up is learning how to deal with adversity and making sure it’s not changing how you think about yourself. It took me a long time to realize that just because I lost at something doesn’t say anything about me. I actually should be a good loser and just take the experience for what it is and use it to get better. Not trying is the worst thing because you didn’t even give yourself a chance and you also missed out on figuring out what you could have learned from trying (and losing). This is what I’m trying to I still in my kids.

I know that my kids hate losing, especially to eat other. I don’t want them to look at each other as rivals and I do want them to operate as a team. I have tried a few things where they would need to work together to beat a timer or beat me at something. My 5 year old daughter and 4 year old son love working together in those situations and most of the time, we bend things a bit so they are successful because they worked together. I recently had them start racing each other on bikes and I would run beside them. They got better at controlling how they reacted to losing the race and made sure to prepare for the next one. Taking that to a different context though was challenging.

There was a situation where I needed to pick up my daughter from kindergarten and I was running a bit behind. My son was running beside me and as a I saw the kids walk out of the classroom, I turned on the nitro and sprinted to make sure I could pick up my daughter as she was walking out. My son saw how fast and far ahead i was and sat down. He wasn’t happy that he wasn’t in front of me or at least beside me. I did apologize to him for leaving him in the dust, but what I talked to him about was just to keep trying your best at running no matter what. He said he understood.

There was another situation where I had both of them in the backseat ready to buckle up, but they chose to goof off. I asked them which one could buckle up the fastest and my son won that quickly. My daughter got upset and said she doesn’t like competing. I had another talk with her to make sure she always tried her best and that if she didn’t want to compete, she didn’t have to (and could opt out). I also realized that I was having them compete against each other and didn’t want to push any rivalries early on, so I won’t be using that trick to get them buckled up quicker for a while.

After those two situations, my kids started to understand what it meant to just keep trying. We were at a park and they ended up racing back and forth against each other the whole time on their bikes. To my surprise, they both were being good losers and figuring out what they needed to improve to win the next race. By the end of the the day, they were absolutely exhausted from racing each other and fell asleep early. It took time for the little seeds I planted to grow, but when the seeds sprouted, it was a big win for everyone (including for me because I got extra free time that evening!).