4 year old obsessed with winning, being first

[mizzoh]

ds (4) has a best friend same age. while ds is very happy and easy going, his friend is not. he is very bossy and irritable, and lately is competive about EVERYTHING. he HAS to be first, and if my ds beats him then his friend gets mad, calls ds "stupid", says he isn't fast, etc. it's gotten to the point that the friend can't even enjoy himself when they play because he's so caught up in going faster, first, higher than ds. it ruins the playdates and i'm afraid ds is going to want to stop playing with him.

any insights on how to handle this? his mom and i are at a loss. i know that wanting to be first, and run fastest, is typical for the age, but this seems to be beyond the norm.

thanks!

[wookie]

your ds's friend is my 4yo ds. we're working on it. he doesn't call anyone names though. that would be a big no no for us.

[sbgrace]

My son wouldn't have called the name (very not ok here) but he was obsessed with all that too at four (and five). He's also got a very dominant and bossy personality. His twin is easy going and not even a touch competitive. It's born in them!

I'd suggest you steer the play to things not competitive. It's going to be hard and you both will have to direct/redirect a lot. Ultimately this little guy is going to have to learn through the hard knocks of life that treating people like that means others don't want to play with him. That's the ultimate teacher for softening (or suppressing as it may be) those tendencies.

[mizzoh]

thank you for the replies

yes, i think having them do things that aren't competitive is key, although this kid can turn anything into a competition ( even on the swings he has to be the one to go higher). they do better when we take them places like the zoo or a museum where there is something else to distract them. they saw each other yesterday for the first time in almost a week and it went real well

[titania8]

reading this post makes me feel better about my own super competitive 4.5 yr olds. It's not ALL the time, but enough that I was beginning to worry.

[Grace and Granola]

I also have a competitive 4.5yo. We never do anything competitive, no games, no sports, but he makes up his own games. He's faster, he's first, etc. His little brother is only a year and a half younger than him, so he is constantly doing this to ds2. It makes me crazy. It started right after he turned 4 and it has gotten a lot better recently (now 8 months later). I'm hoping he'll grow out of it, because it is really hard to teach a child to be kind in that way without also squashing their drive and ambition that they obviously have come about naturally.