Playing games

I am quite competitive. Okay I'm fiercely competitive. My husband and the majority of my friends refuse to play games with me because I turn into a psycho bitch from hell the second the lid comes off the box. In fact my husband won't even hear the word 'Monopoly' mentioned since we had a game about 9 years ago and when I realised I wasn't going to win I flipped the board (accidentally on purpose) when I stood up. We've had screaming rows when playing Win, Lose or Draw and on the same team because he's so bloody slow at it, it frustrates the hell out of me (although I do think he's purposefully slow to annoy me).

Anyway, my 6 year old seems to have taken after me and is a terrible loser, tantrums and tears if he loses in most things and has now managed to finely tune which games he'll play with people based on whether he thinks his chances are good of winning or not. Last night he wanted to play Dobble, now I don't know if you've played it before but it can get a bit fraught. My nieces and nephews made me play it with them for the first time at Christmas and I lost my voice through shouting so much. I had words with myself before we played last night to be good, let him win, he's only 6, he's never played it before etc, and then dealt out the cards. My husband was standing next to me as we were playing (probably to make sure I didn't cheat or get crazy) and whilst trying to let my son win I felt the need to show him that I could win if I wanted to. The aim of the game is to find a matching picture on each card to put it down and the person who gets rid of their cards first wins, I was finding the matching picture but not putting it down to give my son a chance to get used to it, but pointed repeatedly to the picture I'd found so that my husband could see that I wasn't actually losing 😂. Anyway by the third game of letting him win he started to get a bit smug so I thrashed him, he had a strop, I had a strop, my husband played with him instead, let him win twice, he got smug again, husband clearly decided he couldn't cope with the smugness and thrashed him. My son dealt out the cards to play one last game with me, he started without telling me he had and I said 'It's fine, I'll give you a head start but I'll still win!!' My husband then started helping him, I tried my hardest, got a bit shouty, it got very tense, he won. He did exactly what I would've done had I won, he jumped up and shouted 'yes!!!! I won, you lost, HA HA!!' At this point I'd normally have stropped off muttering something about the fact it was two against one and he cheated etc but something in me made me start laughing at the likeness between us and give him a big hug. He has got a lot of bad traits from me (the game thing being one) but has somehow also managed to get a few good things from me thank goodness or he'd be a right arse! Anyway I feel like it was a good lesson to him that you have to learn to deal with losing every now and then! (I'm totally going to make him play again tonight obviously as can't bear the fact that I had to go to bed a loser, I'll just play until he loses then send him to bed... Just to help him become a more balanced individual of course!!)