I'm Going to Win!

Every night, when it’s time for Troy to go to bed, he’ll come running out of our bathroom after brushing his teeth and yell, “Dada, I’m going to win!” He’s never been one to want to stop the fun and shut down for the evening, so awhile ago, I decided to try to make going to bed fun. Troy is very competitive, so one night, when he refused to stop playing with his toys and go to his room, I ran to the stairs and told him I was going to beat him upstairs. That was all the push he needed to come running.

Now, it’s become a ritual every night. One of us will start running to the stairs, and the other one will give chase. If I’m in the lead, he’ll usually catch me when I stop to kick my flip-flops off at the bottom of the stairs. Then, we’ll jostle each other or pull at each other’s clothes all the way up the stairs in an attempt to get in front. When we hit level ground again, he’ll take off into a full sprint, and I’ll run behind him, pulling on his waist or legs to slow him down. If by some miracle I’m in the lead when we reach the top, then Troy will run me into the wall as we turn the corner toward his room.

I have only beaten him once, and he had a meltdown. He went all the way back downstairs to his mama, wailing the entire way about how mean I was. I thought it would do him good to lose occasionally, since you can’t always win in life. But he’s a sore loser. I’ll probably continue to let him win, because I’m not looking to upset him right before bed, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to go easy on him! It just means I should expect to spend a lot of time being body-checked into a wall.