Raising a Compassionate Loser
My 10 year old child has many wonderful qualities. He is fun, generous and curious about the world. However, he doesn’t like to lose. And to be honest, this is not unusual. I think that given the choice, most of us would rather win any game we play, otherwise what’s the point of keeping score? But this is something we have had to work on for years in my home, and I have learned a few tricks along the way.
Get started with cooperative games
The point of scoring is to find out who won the game, but actually winning is not the point of the game . Children do not start playing football at the age of six because they want to crush an opponent; they play because it’s fun. So before you start challenging them to a Candy Land duel, introduce them to co-op games.
Preschoolers are the best age to start playing cooperative games in which you will not be opposed to them . Instead, you work together towards a common goal, but you still get all the benefits of practice, such as alternating, following directions, and honing fine motor skills. Favorites in our house were Feed the Woozle , but other popular co- op board games include Hoot Owl Hoot , Mermaid Island, and Race to the Treasure .
Teach them to play the long game
Something came together with me recently, when my son and I started playing the Skip-Bo round , and he was already bristling even before he finished his first move. Although I know that luck can fluctuate greatly and quickly in this game, he treated each hand, as I understood it, as a separate miniature game. Four bad hands in a row could turn out to be four losses for him. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t fun.
When I told him about it in these words – “try not to think of each turn as a separate game, but as one piece of a much larger puzzle” – it resonated with him in such a way that “I don’t understand why you already you get upset; we just started playing ”never played.
If this doesn’t resonate with your children, point out your own failures as they play, so they can see the play from both sides. You can say, “Wow, I was so far ahead of you before, and now you are right on my tail!” or “I thought I could catch you, but I think you are too far ahead of me now!”
Young children often only see play from their own perspective, and sharing some of your experiences (especially when you’re good at losing) can help them develop empathy for their opponent. The goal is not to make them worry about winning, but to remind them that at any given time, if someone wins, someone else loses.
Be Good Losers (and Winners) Yourself
On a weekend trip with my husband and two good friends to a cabin in northern Arizona, someone accused me of something. The four of us were sitting at the dinner table in the hut, drinking beer and playing an incendiary game of Clue – like adults do – when one of my friends made it clear that he thought I was the most competitive in our group.
Knowing that this was deliberately false, I laid out detailed arguments for why I was not the most competitive in the group (which is not competitive at all). Since then, I have had to look deep inside myself and admit that there is a chance that I have a slightly competitive nature, which mainly manifests itself when I play board games or flip the cup (but only because I am very good at both). However, really wanting to win and acting shitty about winning or losing doesn’t have to go hand in hand, and that’s what you should model for your kids.
Since my son was very young, we have a standing practice where, after finishing a game, we shake hands and say, “Good game.” It was a good way for him to watch me lose with a smile on his face – not necessarily happy losing, but happy that I played at all. It’s also a good way to practice and simulate a fair victory. There should be no gloating.
Children, more than anything else, will pick up on our cues about how to react when we lose Uno’s hand or, say, when your soccer team is losing a big game (I’m a Brown fan, so …). If you let it ruin your day, they will understand that winning is so important that losing should negatively affect your mood. Show them how to let losses, big and small, roll off your back as much as possible.
Take it away if you need to
Games are supposed to be fun, so if a game night ends with a mess of tears every time, it might be time to take a short break from the game – or at least one game in particular, which seems to upset them for no reason (I’m looking at you, gamer monopolist ). You can always try again, when some time has passed, the tension will subside, and they will be ready to give one more chance.