Learning to Lose with Grace

It's no secret that the 2016 election has everyone feeling a little grumpy.  And entitled.  And opinionated.  And right (or left).  And some without much hope.  To remain neutral, this post is not about my opinion about the election or the candidates or the issues for which they stand.  This election season has gotten me thinking a lot about how bad we are as Americans at losing.

My children, somehow, have very strong opinions about this election (which is quite funny to me, considering Ben and I have not talked about it at all in front of them).  So, one day, Sydney and I were talking about both Hillary and Donald, and how they were both likely to act pretty ugly if/when they lost the election.  She asked me why this was, and without having much time to consider my answer, I told her I thought it was because they probably had very little experience with losing.  Remember, this is an unresearched and on-the-fly answer, so no corrections, por favor!   They were likely always the smartest in their class- all the way through school.  They were likely the managers, owners, or  person-in-charge of any jobs they had ever had.  Losing was something they had rarely experienced and as a result, often handled poorly.  The crazy thing about some things in life, is that no matter how good you are or amazingly qualified for something, you may still lose.  For example, a presidential election.  You can have two amazing candidates (Can you imagine?!), who are both incredibly qualified, amazingly smart, well-prepared for the job, and one of them has to lose.  This example can be thought of in terms of job promotions with only one available position (CEO, principal, pastor- the list goes on and on).   This is true for sports teams as well.  You can have amazing seasons, coaches, and players, but in a championship game, one of you has to lose, regardless of the fact that you were amazing.  How do we prepare our future generation to be better losers?  To lose with poise and grace?

This weekend, we spent our Saturday morning at Eli's last soccer game.  He had a great game and scored two goals.  He was appropriately aggressive, a good teammate, and often was 1:1 with the other team's best player.   That player was not happy that someone else was a good as him, and maybe, even if just for that day, playing better than him.  He called Eli a "cheater" on several occasions-- I don't think to be mean, I think he actually believed it.  Instead of being the mom who left thinking "Oh yeah, my kid is awesome- he did such a great job today AND he was still kind to the kid yelling mean things at him.  We are winning at being parents!," I felt such burden about our inability to lose.  That normally very cute, usually mild-mannered kid, with great and involved parents, just could not handle losing.  And he totally let it get the best of him.  And unfortunately, I get it.  It is so hard to accept loss.  It's easier to blame someone else, put a negative label on the winner, or divert the simple fact that based on luck or performance, you simply were not the winner.

As usual, I have way more questions about parenting than I have answers.  But, I feel a very strong conviction that parenting the next generation is about a lot more than teaching our kids academics and domestic chores.  If we want the next generation to look different than ours, we have to be different.  We have to be an example of extending grace to those who are not kind to us or who do not deserve it. We have to be an example of losing with grace.  We have to be an example of loving our neighbors.