'Which girl?' I asked.

'Mom' was the pat reply as she was upset with her. She continued the chat mentioning that she was getting disturbed by her mother while chatting.

I sensed that I had to make up my daughter's mood and hence I asked her to tell me about PTM (Parents Teacher Meeting) that they attended that morning. 'Good' was the only reply. I asked her if she had completed 'Daily word' and she confirmed that she had not. I then asked her another usual question about her dance class. She did show me her new step on the webcam that she had recently learnt. I guessed from her short replies that she must've been upset. When my wife returned to chat, I enquired only to learn that my daughter had scored 24.5 out of 25 marks in couple of subjects and hence she was upset! This is the first time that she had lost a 1/2 mark. No, it wasn't a GATE or IIT entrance exam, she is studying in Std 1. For the records, she nevertheless had had scored first rank in that test too.

I remember how she had wept when she had lost in singing competition the other day. She often asks us - "Why doesn't the teacher set difficult question paper?" She was up and ready within an hour with the content when she was selected for news reading the next day. More so, she has won a prize just by preparing few sentences that I had sent as an SMS to help her for elocution competition for Teacher's Day! Sometimes, I wonder if we were unknowingly teaching her just how to win or forgetting to teach her how not to lose. I almost realized that she has never lost in any competition so far !

Often, we've heard that parents fight with the teachers when their children do not secure ranks. We have mostly encouraged teachers during PTM to ensure that our daughter participates in all the events stressing that securing rank is never our priority for her.

It makes me to start thinking of how would I teach her to accept defeat without losing the spirit of being a part of the game. I intend to publish in one of my next blogs the steps that I would use to teach her. I'll be visiting Bangalore in Jan and wish to teach her this as a part of her 7th birthday present.

Till then, take care and let us define how much is enough !