Sore Winners, Good Losers

A couple weeks ago I was playing some games with the boys. We played some card games, a little Rock Band and then we played some Defenders of the Ancients or DotA for short. We had a good time. By the time we got to DotA, which the boys discovered at the LAN party and now LOVE, they wanted to play several rounds. I played against the two of them and won. I played once with each of them and then again on my own.. and won all the matches. I taunt them a bit while we play if I kill their heroes the same way they do if they kill mine.

Bedtime rolls around and they are in their room getting ready for bed. I hear this steady clack..clack..clack. I figured the fan they have in there was blowing something but if they were ok with it I let it go. I don't hear it with my fan on and door closed anyway. I hear a few muttered words in there.. with a bit of a 'tude .. and then silence other than the 'clack'. Not long after my older some comes in and says that he can't sleep because G is being 'obnoxious'. So I go in to see what the deal is and its not the fan, but G himself repeatedly knocking one of the blinds into the wall. He is still dressed in all but his shoes and lying on top of his blankets.

So, I start to try and figure out what is going on. B goes back to bed and I start talking with G. He is angry, upset and has tears in his eyes. I don't know what turns kids into a big bag of emotions at the 10-12 year range, but it happened with B and now he is going through it as well. The littlest things will set him off. Tonight it was the fan. They share a fan to creat some white noise and they both like the air circulating. However, there is no good way to position it so they both get the breeze directly on them and its a box fan so it doesn't oscillate. Apparently he had been getting up after his brother went to sleep and point it directly at him and then going to sleep like that. At which point B claims he ends up waking up from being to warm and can't go back to sleep when he does that. That is what the harsh words were form earlier.

So.. this has become a full blown issue. I had him put his head at the other end of the bed and then put the fan blowing in between the two of them and suddenly he had all the air he wants without moving the fan. Crisis solved right? All is well? Not so much. He is still upset. I ask whats wrong and he finally blurts out "YOU ALWAYS WIN!"

Now I take a minute to think about that.. and we talk about it. He is old enough, 11, where we can actually have a rational discussion. I asked him what I always win at because he and his brother can hold their own and win in the card games we play. They trounce me in the Monkey Speed game we played. G is better at guitar in Rock Band than I am at this point. He said "you always win at computer games".

I had to explain that I have a lot more experience with strategy type computer games. That I had been playing them for years and years and on top of that I had more experience playing DotA in particular from previous LAN parties. The rest of our conversation went something like this:

Me: Think about it for a minute. Would you REALLY want me to just let you win? To not try my best?

G: Yes.

Me: Really?

G: Well.. no.

Me: Ok.. tell me why.

G: Well I know I will beat you eventually when I get better at the game and I want to know that I beat you fair and that you weren't letting me win.

Me: So you are ok with me doing my best to win even if right now it means you are losing most of the time?

G: Yeah.. I will get you soon.

Me: That's the attitude you want. Look at a loss as a challenge, not a defeat. If you lose, figure out what you did wrong, or better yet, what I did right and encorporate that into the next round.

G: I will.


All calmed down and with renewed determination to win, he finally drifted off to sleep. No doubt with dreams of visciously slaying my heroes and leaving their dismembered limbs strewn across the field of battle.

It was an interesting experience and discussion. Its wonderful to be able to sit and discuss something and have them have those kind of insights now. We have since had discussion on being winners and losers and how to handle both. They have both since beaten me at DotA. It didn't take them long to figure out the tougher strategies and learn how to use them to their advantage. So I had to graciously admit defeat and say Good Game even though my competative side wanted to tell them to stop playing a cheap class with the IWIN button. Sometimes it sucks to have to set a good example when what you want to do is go off and tell them how lame they are and that they just got lucky that time. That the sun was in my eyes. That my system was lagging.

We have had to have some discussions on attitudes while playing.. and in accepting defeat or graciously winning. Its become very important as of late as both of them are getting more and more involved in competative sports. They know that when its me and them, we are going to do a little trash talking and give each other a hard time. They also have to know that at any other time, they need to know how to be .. sportsmanlike. I always thought that was a horrible word for describing how to behave in a competative environment. They need to understand that being a obnoxious winner is just as bad as being a sore loser. That no one wants to play with someone who has a bad attitude.

All in all, I think they get it and they are trying. They still have their lapses and bad moments. But then so do I. :P