He will be grinning all day!

Yes, my son will be grinning all day this week. Why? Because his favourite soccer team won the Champions League. Yes! Manchester United beat Chelsea after the game was tied 1-1 at full and extra time. The game was decided on penalty kicks, and Man U won 6-5.

Fortunately my daughter, who is a big supporter of Chelsea, wont be sulky the whole day, despite the fact that her brother will be rubbing it in that her team lost and his team won. She takes defeat much better. She will be unhappy for a short while, and then she will bounce right back to her usual self.

My son, does take defeat well too. But he will be so disappointed, you can see it on his face.

Usually when children are younger, they are not able to take defeat as well. They want to win at everything. I remember when my kids were young, they were no different, they couldnt take defeat at all. They would cry when they lost playing a game, any game. But we must teach them to lose graciously. Fortunately for my kids, they have learnt to accept defeat thru chess. Especially when they were starting out, they played against many stronger players, and lost their games. Fortunately they did not cry or throw a tantrum.

During the last chess tournament, my son had a rough start. In his final game, he managed to make a brilliant move which pinned his opponents queen and king. A Victory would have ended his day on a sweet note. However, his opponent was not willing to concede the game and chose to sit there for the remaining 2 hours. Everyone was waiting for them, as theirs was the last game. Finally the chief arbiter came and told the boy that the game was up. The boy just smashed all the chess pieces off the board!! He was given a stern warning that he could be barred from all future chess tournaments. He obviously could not accept defeat. And because of that, tho' my son won, he did not enjoy the win because of the incident!

Parents need to teach their children that its ok to lose. I always tell them: As long as you tried your best, thats all that matters. And sometimes you make a mistake, its ok. But you must learn from your mistakes.

I feel that if children are not taught to accept defeat, they may not be able to take the bigger blows in life - and that would be disastrous! Its ok to be disappointed, but its not the end of the world coz life is such that you cant win all the time.