competitive preschoolers - is this normal?

[andalucia]

My 3 and 1/2 year old ds and my friend's dd, same age, have become unbelievably and unbearably competitive with each other, for example tehy are constantly racing about who flashes the toilet first, who sits down first, who presses the button at the traffic lights, everything basically. This pm I am looking after them as my friend is at work, how can I deal with the competiveness,it is unpleasant and makes being with them exhausting. I am thinking of going down the reward route, and give them something for each time they refrain from doing a race ,or give a reward to the loser in case they do do a race. Any suggestions?

ignore them

throw them in a garden together

only intervene if there are definite howls .. crying and whinging doesn't cover it

they will work it out for themselves

I agree with Twig.

And for the journey home make them take it in turns to press traffic light buttons etc. and say this is a 'no race' journey so nobody is the winner or loser. Engage in a game of I Spy instead.

And in terms of 'is this normal?' I've seen tons and tons of kids do this at exactly this age. Some are worse than others. My dd is shy so she only does it with me! But she's got 1 friend in particular who turns everything into a competition, it's such a bore.

Don't have a garden. Whoever loses one of their effing races, throws themselves about, howls and screams. My ds would also pretty much win the whole time, physically bigger than friend's dd, so have to engineer things so that she wins sometimes. Can I teach them to say something virtuous like "it doesn;t matter, or some you win, some you lose". Hate kids!

We do lots of little games when walkng about with them, and they get distracted, and that works, until the effing traffic light!