Inez is Competitive

Only the other day, Flowerin, my blogger friend was saying that she's worried about her daughter's competitive nature. It turns out my daughter is the same! We knew she was competitive but we didn't realise to what extent she was competitive.

One night, Inez and Mika decided that they wanted to race from one end of the carpet to the other end of the carpet with a ball between their legs. So, on your mark, get ready and go, and the two kids were off jumping, each with a ball between their feet and the first round Inez won. So I said, now it's Mommy's turn. Winner gets to compete with a new guy, since there are only 2 balls. And so of course I won. So Mika's out and it's Daddy's turn. Then it's Inez against her Daddy.

Now they wanted to walk with the ball between their legs, so 1st round, it was between Inez and Mika again and this time round, Inez won again. And we got Mika to say "Congratulations" to Inez; and Inez to say to Mika, "You can do it!"

But later, when Inez lost, she didn't want to shake Mika's hands. What a sore loser, I thought. What are we going to do?

So we continued the race. Since Inez lost, she's out. So, Mika raced with me. I lost on purpose and congratulated Mika and Mika assured me that I could do it. When Inez wanted to race in my place. I said, "No, Inez. Since you did not congratulate anyone just now, you can't play anymore. If you did, you are going to be frustrated many times because you are NOT going to win every time. If you want to play, you have to be a good loser and congratulate the winner and enjoy yourself playing/ racing."

Inez was silent for a while. Then she disappeared into her room for a while. It turned out she went to get some stuff and made sort of a barrier or hurdle in the middle of the carpet. She said she wouldn't be racing coz she was a bad loser but everyone else could. When we reached the barrier of toy bears and drums and cushions, we had to jump over it. Whoever reached the end of the carpet first, won. Woho, this was going to be how it was... So my hubby and I exaggerated our enjoyment when playing this new race she created but couldn't join in and made a fuss over congratulating each other that suddenly, Inez wanted to join in too. So we asked her if she was going to be a bad loser. She said, "No."

And we tested it. Sometimes we made sure we won, and sometimes we lost to her but Inez did not keep her hand to herself now. Tonight, maybe we'll race again and see if she needs reminding.