Sportsmanship


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It's 2:30 AM, and I'm alone and awake again.

The photo above is from the same afternoon when we got William his new bike. After riding a while, he wanted to play a little t-ball, using the old Christmas gift from 2005. Or was it from his birthday?

Anyway, I've been somewhat detoured at work from doing science by requests for more matrix plots. Oh, well. Plus, I got sick Tuesday, probably more exhaustion from lack of sleep. To top it all off, I finally fired up TurboTax and began doing taxes. Stock options and sales of spinoff stocks are making things difficult, not to mention deductions from daycare expenses and whatnot.

William had his annual physical check-up today. Although William is off the charts mentally -- off the top end -- he is, like Mommy and Daddy, on the short and light side. (That is, I was underweight when I was a child. While Hsuan is short and I'm on the short side of average, neither of us can be considered underweight now.) Our pediatrician is not worried, though. William is "proportionate", to use the pediatrician's word, and he also said that, given the obesity epidemic among children nowadays, he'd much rather kids be like William than too fat.

So that's heartening. (On other characteristics, his hearing is normal, and his eyesight is 20/20.)

Hsuan left the pediatrician's office early to bring James to My Gym for some free play, while I stayed behind and held William while he got five immunization shots (well, one was a tuberculin skin test). William cried a lot in scared anticipation of the shots, cried loudly during the shots, and cheerfully proclaimed "I'm OK!" after the shots.

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Brought William to My Gym after the pediatrician.

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This evening, William played Bowling on the Nintendo Wii with Auntie Holly. The first time they played a few days ago, Holly couldn't bowl at all. This evening, she started to win, and William started getting upset. The more Holly tried to lose, the more strikes she bowled. (When William and I play Boxing on the Wii, I have to work very, very hard to lose to him, while still keeping the game interesting.) Hsuan kept urging Holly in Chinese to lose, and it just didn't happen.

In the end, William ended up being a poor loser, literally in tears, and I had to give him a very long, thorough lecture about sportsmanship, how to be a good loser as well as a good winner, and why it's all important and part of being morally good in general. I think it's important to make sure he learns these kinds of lessons at every opportunity, and I told him I wouldn't allow him to play again until he promised to be a good sport. In the end, Holly and William played bowling again, and he won, but only by 5 points (and only after Holly had to work extra hard to lose again). I told him that he won't be allowed to play the Wii again until after I play boxing with him and he loses -- just to see if he is serious about good sportsmanship.

Posted: Thu - March 8, 2007 at 02:33 AM          

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