Hoping for your children

Are your kids ever in competitions? Even if it's something minor, I think as parents we would all agree we'd love to see our children win. If our children don't typically win...anything, we'd REALLY love to see them win...anything! Yesterday my 8 yr old participated in AWANA's Derby Race. He used the same car from Cub Scouts. The same care that stopped 1/2 way down the track every time. For AWANA he forgot all 3 times to bring his new block of wood to the workshops. So, with a bit of graphite to actually get the wheels to turn, we got him set up with his old car.

The race began, and he won his first set! Wahoo!! He was so cool about winning, like it was no big deal. His second set, he lost. His third set, again, lost. The kid he lost to in the third set gave him the knuckle high five. It was really awesome to see.

So, my son's time this year seemed over. There were no more races left. We just watched the rest of the racers go for the gold. They gave out the trophies for the top four girls and the top four boys. There were four trophies for best design. I thought there could be a slim chance they liked his car...or not. They worked their way up to first place and I was ready to go. "First Place goes to Jacob B.!" WHAT? My friend's were looking at me and I was dropping everything to get my camera out. WHAT? My kid won Best Design?! I couldn't push the chairs out of the way so I hopped over them. Now, this could've been disasterous since I'm not graceful and have a tendency to be a klutz. All I could see was missing out on the photo op! I probably would've shoved some sweet grandma out of the way to get to my son...my WINNING son!

Three seperate Derby's over the last 2 years and he'd won nada! I was so excited for him. It didn't matter that he hadn't won trophies for the races. I was thrilled that he'd had success. I'd have done cartwheels if he'd gotten 4th Place. I hadn't wanted to see the look on his face if he had come home with just another ribbon. Sometimes I think it's good for our kids to win something, anything. Yesterday Jacob did just that!