Michelle's Madness

So last night I’m sitting at the dining room table with the boys, and I started thinking about some of their differences. Sure, they have many similarities; they both love Star Wars, superheroes and Transformers. They love to play outside with their friends and go to the park. They love the same movies. And of course, everything Jacob does, Logan has to do too, because Jacob is the coolest person Logan has ever met.

But it’s their differences that are very interesting. Logan wakes up smiling; Jacob wakes up grumbling, once you finally get him to wake up. Jacob is a picky eater, whom we must convince to try new things; Logan is game to try just about anything. He even loves broccoli. Jacob is a little negotiator (I told him if my company ever wants to buy another company that I would tell them to give him a call; he asked if I was kidding him); when asked to do something, Logan will usually just say, “Okay!” and do it. (Usually.) When doing anything that is considered a competition, Logan cheers when anyone wins, while Jacob gets annoyed when he isn’t the winner. We’ve been working on this by playing Chutes and Ladders. It’s actually a great way to show him that just because he is last, it’s not impossible for him to win. Someone might land on a chute, or he might land on a ladder. His sportsmanship has been so much better this week, even last night when he did come in last. He knows that there will be another game and another chance to win. This is a huge breakthrough for him.

I remember the first time we ever played Chutes and Ladders with Jacob. Logan was too little to play, so it was just the three of us. Jacob won the first game, but when he lost the second game, he got all kinds of pissed off. To the point where we put the game away and didn’t play again for a long, long time. We played this weekend and he started to do the same thing: he won the first game, but when he was behind on the second game, he started to complain that he didn’t want to play anymore. He didn’t get too angry though, so that was a nice change from the little beast he became when he was younger. Hopefully it will just continue to get better.

The next task: teaching him to win gracefully!