I’ve been thinking for a long time of sharing about Nehemiah’s competitive nature.

When we do school together, we spend some time doing grammar. Lately, we have been identifying singular and plural nouns as well as common or proper. Each day he has about 9 practice problems. He constantly wants to keep track of who is winning- the singulars or the plurals. If the first problem is a singular he’ll say “one-nothing, the singulars are ahead.” And he wants to keep a running score of which is winning. Finally I had to draw a line and say that he can only total it up AFTER he has done the problems because he got so wrapped up in who was winning that he was not concentrating on the skill itself :)

But it doesn’t end there. This morning for breakfast we were having apple cinnamon pancakes. And all of sudden he was trying to compete with Evangeline for who had the most apples in their pancakes.

Nehemiah: “Wohoo. Two nothing. I have two apples you have none.”
Evangeline: “I don’t want to play this game.”
Nehemiah: “Well I have two you have nothing.”

Thankfully, Jacob is home now and could engage in the competition. I think the score ended up being 14 to 11, for Jacob, who I think was just adding a number every time Nehemiah would come close :)

Last example, one of the neighbor boys comes over to play soccer often with Nehemiah. This other boy is just as competitve as Nehemiah and so they end up going at it. It is really hilarious listening to Nehemiah talking in Arabic and trying to win the argument. It goes something like this:

Nehemiah: “Ana talata wa inta arba.” (I have three and you have four.)
Addi Nassar: “La ana hamsa wa inta talata.” (No, I have five and you have three.)
Nehemiah: “MOM! Adi Nassar says that he scored a goal but he really didn’t.”

So, yeah my son is ultra competitive. I wonder where he gets that from?