When You Realize You’re Parenting Yourself

I noticed something just before Christmas. My daughter hates to lose. Yeah, I know. So do most people. But she hates to lose and is sourly sore about it when it happens. I noticed this when we began saying, “I’ll race ya to the potty!” in the midst of an epic “accident” relay. She didn’t “win” because she refused to move from her toys in the living room and she melted down like no other.

So I decided that maybe for Christmas, one or two of her gifts should be boardgames. She’s the perfect age for CandyLand and Hungry, Hungry, Hippo so those we’re the ones I choose. I devised a plan to bring CandyLand with us to my parents house so we could play with a few people. We were all set up to play and possibly for her to lose. And we played three games and she won all three fair and square. Go figure. It must have been beginner's luck.

A few days later, we set up the game to play, just she and I, and the cards were not in her favor. Momma got to skip ahead, I got a few double colors, and she hit a skip turn. She was pretty upset. And she threw the board.

Yikes. My mind flashed back to when I was about 9 years old. I was playing Monopoly with my sister and my parents. Something didn’t go my way. Maybe I went bankrupt. I don’t really know. But I was MAD. And I threw a fit. Before I made it to my bedroom, my dad was off the floor and popped my bottom with a quick swat. It was the one and only time my dad spanked me. It was also the one and only time I was a sore loser out loud.

My husband and I do not spank our kids. We discipline differently for a variety of reasons I won’t get into here. So when my daughter threw the board, she lost her game. I immediately cleaned it up and put it away where she could not reach it until she could calm down.

Once she calmed down, we talked about how to be a kind loser and to be happy for our friends or family when they win, because we all have to take turns winning. And in some ways, I honestly feel like I was talking to myself.

You see, even though I learned as a child to play fair, win nicely, and lose friendly, I still struggle with a competitive nature. I want to win—the game, the recognition, the praise. But it’s not always in the cards for me. Sometimes I lose. Sometimes, someone else gets the recognition, the praise. But that doesn’t take away from the awesome job I did. It doesn’t take away from my innate good qualities. It just means the focus isn’t on me. And that isn’t always a bad thing.

After our talk and some friendly playing with other games and activities, she earned her game back. And we played again. She congratulated me when I won. And was doubly excited to win and be congratulated by me. She’s not a perfect sport yet (in fact, she was playing with one of my friends and she insisted she was done playing and promptly began cleaning up the game when she realized she was, in fact, about to lose). But she’s learning.

And isn’t that at least what we should all be doing? Learning from our mistakes, our failures, our shortcomings? I may be a “grown-up” but I’ll tell you what; my three-year-old teaches me how to improve myself on a daily basis. And I am so grateful for that.