When it comes to being competitive I’m definitely at the “shallow end of the gene pool”. (said the way Scar did to Mufasa in the Lion King)  I think it may have to do with the fact that I was never very athletic so I never played sports.  I was raised with an older brother who is seven years older than I and male so there was never any competition there either.  Career wise, I have landed in an HR role for a large corporation that promotes and nurtures teamwork in all aspects of the organization so again, no opportunity for competition there.  I enjoy watching most sports but even then I always feel bad for the losing team and I  never get caught up in trash talk because after all “it’s just a game”.

My Non-competitive style is great for my heart as I am pretty cool and collected (most of the time) but I am the mother of two boys. Two boys who are exactly a year apart. Two boys that have a dad. A dad who grew up playing competitive sports, a dad that is the eldest of three siblings, a dad who coaches soccer very passionately, a dad who can be heard from a few blocks down if his team loses. Needles to say, my sons were born with the competitive gene and what nature didn’t provide, nurture did. My greatest parenting challenge right now with my boys is trying to teach them that everything is not a competition. That I love them both very much as unique individuals and not based on what one is better than the other at.

Some of the competition is regular everyday things like when they play soccer or basketball together. It always ends in an argument about who really won. Other times though it’s about who finished their dinner first or who go more grapes in their bowl. This has been going on since they were about 2 and 3 but it wasn’t until last weekend that I realized how competitive they really are. I took them to their school fun fair and they got to go inside an ambulance and speak to one of the paramedics. The paramedics bandaged both of their arms ( for fun) and took their heart rate. As they were stepping out of the ambulance my younger son turns to the other and asks ” What was your heart rate”? “ninety-five” my eldest replies. My younger son flashes a bright smile and says  “mine was ninety-eight. I win!”