Game On

Justice hates to lose at Trivial Pursuit. Hates it, hates it, hates it.

Hates it so much, in fact, that if her brother gets one answer right -- just one before she does -- out comes the pout, out comes the growl, the tears, the ferocity, the wish-you-were-dead dragon eyes -- and the game is over.

Justice is having a harder time with good sportsmanship than Justin. Neither one of them are aces at it by any means, but Justin is making really good progress. Justice is not. Not yet anyway. Believe me, it's on my bucket list.

Don't get me wrong. The kids are best friends and they play together beautifully...as long as the game doesn't involve actual winning or losing. Justin's getting a handle on it now. In a year, fifteen months, he's come to the conclusion that somebody always wins at Space Checkers, Skippy, and it ain't always him. He's making his peace with that fact, and the world isn't ending. His sister, however, is holding out for miracles.

We played another game yesterday -- one of those dreadful picture bingo games with the wobbly spinner and the red cover squares and the infinite respins hoping for a winner, and the game was in a dead heat. They each had one square left to go. I was sure it was going to be bitter pandemonium when one lost and one won -- that would be par for the course -- but I was pleasantly surprised when Justin took his loss in stride. When Justice spun and the arrow hit the lucky slot she was waiting for, I winced and offered my usual "wanna keep playing for second place?" to placate the loser, but Justin just shrugged and smiled and said, "That's okay, she can win." Taking the loss and getting on with it, so we had time to play another game was more important to him than winning.

That's huge in this house. Huge progress. Huge growth.

Buoyed by my ever-illogical optimism, I launched us into an immediate follow-up with Trivial Pursuit Jr., and we weren't two minutes into the game as noted above, before Justice, fresh on the heels of her bingo victory -- two freaking minutes ago! -- was already pouting, hostile and ready to tantrum because her brother guessed a knuckle sandwich is something you'd likely get from (c) the school bully, and not (a) your best bud, or (b) your pet dog.

Christ on crutches, as Lee Trinrud used to say. When does it end?

Justice loves to play games. She asks to play games. She just doesn't like to lose. Not ever. Not even a little bit. Which, I've got to tell you, makes it a real pain-in-the-ass to play with her.

Now at 8, her complete inability to lose graciously is a very unattractive quality, but not entirely without understanding. I have to stop myself frequently and remind myself she's just a kid. In the grand scheme of emotional maturity, it barely makes sense to tell her to act her age, because, well, she is acting her age. Kids don't like to lose. She's not a rarity. I get it.

But there's a tad more at play, and I'll steal it right out of the brilliantly funny book on sibling bickering called "Mom, Jason's Breathing on Me." Here's the heart of the problem. This answer has Justice written all over it, and it's as wise as any I've ever heard:

"Known to all parents, yet somehow not recognized as a basic fact of human existence is that we all -- kids and adults -- have two distinct and separate modes of operating, really two distinct selves. One is an at-home and with-immediate-family version of us that just wants to relax, to unwind, to be nurtured, wants what it wants now, has minimal self-control, and will tolerate zero stress. It is the regressed version of our kids and of us. I call it the baby self. But there is another side that operates at a completely different and higher level of functioning. It is the part of us and our kids that goes out into the world, has patience, has self-control, is willing to delay gratification in order to work toward a goal, and can and will tolerate stress. I call this the mature self."

I've suspected this for some time now, particularly during the past year's sometimes-at-odds, big-picture communications with Justice's first grade teacher, who sang her praises to the rooftops and couldn't understand why we would want to address her allegedly-challenging behavior, much less medicate her. To Mrs. Teacher, Justice was a flawless beacon of perfect behavior in the classroom. The words were never said, but we could see it in her eyes every time she talked to us about behavior or medication issues...are you guys nuts??

But what she and other teachers fail to understand is, sometimes the kids you consider to be your best-behaved students are, plain and simple, just giving you the full content of their mature tank, and once that tank runs out, there's nothing left but the baby self to come home to the parents. From 8 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon, you get Justice at her best. But that's her per diem. That's all she has to give. She holds it in, and then, like letting out a deep breath coming up from underwater, Adam and I get her explosion, her expulsion of everything else. Don't get me wrong, Mrs. Teacher. I'm glad she was a peach in your classroom, but walk a mile in my shoes and you'll see really quickly when the final bell rings, we get stuck with little Linda Blair from The Exorcist.

So, baby-self and mature-self...not just a concept for I wish teachers everywhere would consider more seriously when they doubt parents' sanity, but definitely a dicey dichotomy when it comes to breaking out a deck of Uno cards here at home.

The lessons are important, so they continue:

1. Sportsmanship matters.
2. Life has winners AND losers.
3. You will sometimes be one and sometimes the other.
4. That's just how it works.
5. Learn to deal with it now as a child, or you will never be able to deal with it as an adult.

I think all kids need to learn those five things. I think we are failing miserably in our collective, parental and educational framework to teach those lessons. No wonder kids go meltdown manic when they lose. We've created a bizarro alternate universe where they don't have to anymore. Where parents and teachers, loving peace and quiet above everything else, came up with an entire new world designed around every child wins...all the time, which if you ask me, is a coddled concept that's bat shit crazy with a Capital C.

It's a world where Justice still thinks she can win anything. Where "her way or the highway" has gone on way too long and has not been dealt with very well for the past eight years, much of my own 15-month tenure included.

Her oppositional defiant disorder still rages. Granted, she is much more settled, much more comfortable here. She climbs into bed with me in the middle of the night and happily cuddles into my arms with a sigh and a snore. She won't do it in her waking world yet. She'd flat-out die before she'd show me affection in broad daylight. But when the night is long and the monsters are in the closet, mine are the arms she turns to, and I'm thrilled to offer them. As Clevon Little said as the old lady knocked on his window and gave him the pie in Blazing Saddles, "I'm quickly becoming an underground sensation in this town."

Love and comfort are not the issues anymore. Her problem has been, and still remains, basic compliance.

Hope springs eternal I suppose, and Justice still believes every argument, every procedure, every damn parental point of order is hers to win. From no more snacks if you don't eat dinner to pick up the mess you just made, everything -- and Lord almighty, I mean everything -- is still a fight. The mature-self you see when Justice is out in public is nothing at all like the baby-self who unleashes her furious, unending desire to be the one in charge here at home.

"The baby-self wants what it wants now, has minimal self-control, and will tolerate zero stress."

Oy vey, that's our pumpkin in a nutshell. Winning at games or winning over us, Justice does not like to come in second. She detests it with every fiber.

Miss Hannah, our family therapist, who cleverly recognizes not just the kids' disobedience issues, but the skittish hesitancy toward more in-your-face strictness from newbie dads, encourages us at nearly every turn to be firmer.

"You're promoting their attachment beautifully," she told us. "You've done more to encourage healthy attachment than any other parents I've ever seen. You are great at this. They are attaching to both of you just fine. That earns you huge leeway when it comes to being stricter with them. Use it."

In my mind, Miss Hannah talks in italics a lot.

So yeah, she's absolutely right, and God bless her for pointing it out. Stuff like that is not basic instinct to new parents of adopted older kids. Our default setting is "make them love us." It is not "make them respect us." It has taken great practice to make that approach with Justice our new default setting. We are not hard-asses by nature -- not at all -- and it's weird sometimes to have to be.

But there is great pleasure in seeing it start to work.

When Justice first got here, she thought she could beat us 100% of the time. And there were many days when she did, bless her.

Now it's a crankier, more cynical pair of parents who come to her door when it's ding-dong, bullshit calling, and the poor girl is starting to realize it. There's a confused but dawning look of wonder on her face when she realizes she's not in charge anymore, and I don't half mind putting it there.

Consistently not letting her have her way is beginning, blessedly, to wear her down. She still has her tantrums. I don't think we'll see the end of those babies anytime soon, but they've lost their luster. The critics aren't impressed anymore and she knows she's playing to an empty house. She still launches into defiance over the silliest, dumbest little things, but I think even she is starting to understand the futility of her performance. Like a train running out of steam, there's a certain je-ne-sais-quoi-what's-the-point to her drama these days, and she knows it.

Half Broke Horses. Thank you, Jeannette Walls, for such a great book title. I think of it all the time when Justice rears up on me. I'd like to brand it on her arm with a Sharpie marker. Keep it up, kiddo, and good luck. You're half broke now, and I guarantee, I'll take you the rest of the way. Saddle up.

I say this with love, not anger. I say it with the comedy, snarkiness, bravado and overblown machismo that makes good journal reading. In real life, it happens with a little more finesse. She's just eight after all. A worldly, cranky, pain-in-the-ass eight, but still just eight. And we do love her insanely. More than I ever thought possible.

But now she's less of a migraine, and more of a curiosity as I hone my skills. I'm already very good at loving, but I'm taking a new delight in parenting. Yes, you will think I'm an asshole today, and I'm completely cool with that. It took me fifteen months to get here, but I get it now. If your kids aren't pissed at you once a day because you didn't let them have their way over some minor kid nonsense, bwaaaappp, game over. You just bought it at the buzzer.

That's the score from our house, anyway. Justice shoots wildly from half-court every chance she gets, still hoping to sink one, but so far, no swish. We have her tears, we have her anger, we love her fiercely and we try again.

What this has to do with losing board games to her brother, I have no idea. But I know they're related. And if I can teach one lesson, I can teach the other.

Teaching someone who has already lost so much there's an honest importance in losing with dignity and losing with grace is a long and difficult lesson. But it's one worth teaching her.

I love you, Justice Reisman.

Deal the cards.

"Mom, Jason's Breathing on Me: The Solution to Sibling Bickering" by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D. c.2003 Ballantine Books