Competetive Nature

Watching Lily at soccer tonight was eye-opening.  For the last ten minutes, twenty kids, ages 4 and 5, played a "game" of soccer.  Some kids picked grass, some half-heartedly jogged back and forth with the mob, and some swarmed the ball.  Lily was in the swarm.  In fact, I think she considered herself the queen bee.  Not only did she steal the ball from the blue team, she knocked it away from her own yellow teammates.  Now don't get me wrong, I don't consider this behavior desirable, but at the same time, my parental pride welled up at the sight of her running her little tushy off! 
After practice I talked with her a little about the game.  When we got to the part about her taking the ball from her own teammates, she expressed frustration that some kids weren't playing "right."  I commented that she was probably feeling competetive, like she wanted to score so much that she might do things that aren't good. 
"Yeah, sometimes I wanted to push kids down so I could just go and score.  But I knew when the game was over I wouldn't feel good about that."
I could not help but chuckle.  That pretty much sums up the tug-of-war between ambition and civility.