My son is only four years old and already show signs of a very strong competitive streak. This has set me thinking (always a dangerous thing!) about how and why I got my own competitive nature and whether there's anything I can do about it.

[More:]

I think my own competitive streak really started when I was 11 and my parents made us (yes, I hated them at the time) move house from the south coast to the Midlands. Up until then, I'd put in no particular effort at schoolwork but managed to get placed in the top sets at the local high school, all be it that it didn't have a particularly strong reputation. (If we'd not moved, my parents had me enrolled for a nearby church school!)

When we moved, the teachers at my new school (which had a top reputation) gave me a few tests, looked at my untidy school books and plonked me in the second set for maths and the third set for English.

That was it. I felt slighted and determined to prove the teachers wrong! Six months later, I got top marks in the yearly exams and was moved to the top sets for maths and English, despite the reported reluctance of the head of English as he had never had to do this before. From that point, my competitive streak had been sparked!

But while my competitive streak has been great for motivating me to do and achieve things I might otherwise not have, it has also been the source of much unhappiness. Instead, of being happy with my best, I have always been externally referenced, rating myself not just against others but always against the best of the best ie almost inevitable falling short. And where I do succeed at things, instead of enjoying that success, it just seems to make the failures even harder.

So why the concentration on and analysis of this fact? Quite simply, because I worry about how best to deal with my son's competitive streak. Already I catch myself using it to motivate him. The easiest way of getting dressed in the morning is to suggest his brother might be dressed before him. And he hates losing. In fact, he will swear black is white or completely change the rules of a race to avoid doing so. I can't help worrying that this competitive streak may cause him misery in the future and yet how do I protect him from it? For all the modern emphasis in schools on taking part being more important than winning etc, the fact is that competition is very much part of the world we live in.