Winning!

Winning! But not really. Damn.

I went autocrossing again this weekend. I had a really good time and I felt that I drove much better than the last event. I was a super smiley guy when I walked in the door. Later that evening I checked the results online and found out that I didn't actually do as well against my competition as I had thought. I was still slow, and probably just about as slow as I was the last time. The great feelings of driving well slowly evaporated as I started at the charts of lap times.
When my kids play sports, on teams, or against each other, or even against me, I'm supposed to tell them that having fun is more important than winning. Their soccer league doesn't even keep score, instead focusing on playing the game and having fun. The kids keep score though, they always do. No matter how much we try to de-emphasize winning, the kids are always keeping track of it. It's human nature, we like to compete, and when we do, we like to win. It's more than that though. We don't like sucking at things. It's more fun to shoot an arrow and have it hit the center of the target than miss by a foot, even if you're the only one there. It's more fun to play a musical instrument well than poorly, even if you never perform. It's better to place third in your age group than fourth at the local 5K race. It's clearly better to cook a good dinner than a bad one, even if your wife will love you either way. Everything is a joy when it's done well.

So how do we reconcile this as a parent? How do you make sure that winning isn't the only measure of success while at the same time acknowledging that that winning really is very important to the person involved in the activity? I'm not sure that I know the answer to that. I think that paying attention to your kids feelings is pretty important. Having empathy when they lose badly is more important than trying to make they feel good even though they were crushed by a superior opponent. At the same time, you need to share their joy at winning while reminding them of the joy in just doing something well, and that their opponents might be feeling pretty bad. Competition, winning and losing, doing something successfully, is as much about emotion as anything else.
I'm 36 and a dad to four. and even I get bent when the competitions I participate in don't go as well as I'd like. I'm going to work hard to remember that as I'm parenting my kids through their wins and losses this year. Hopefully I can at least win at that.