Dealing with kids who are sore losers

[Anothernamethesamegame]

Dd is 7 and is a terrible loser. She strops and moans and throws a fit when she looses. Obviously it is a development thing. Anything we can do to help her develop the skill of being a good loser?

Hopefully she will grow out of it. My Brother did though he is still very competetive (so is his wife!). He used to kick the board over when playing monopoly. Still..at least he joined in (until he lost!) both my dad and aunt would refuse to play as they would hate to lose!

Just keep playing lots of games. Our kids all struggled at that age. Short games that you can quickly play lots of times worked well for us. We loved Kersplat and too many monkeys as first games. French cricket is great too.

Maybe it does just need time. I’m not so worried about at home more about the impact on friendships. No one likes playing with someone who makes a big drama over losing. Was just watching her at her hobby and she threw a wobbler when “knocked out” of one round of a game they did.

She seems to be getting better with loosing at board games ….though she actually wins a lot. It’s more physical games, play with other kids she struggle with.

Short games so they win and lose during a session. Made the losses less of a big thing when they also won.

We also played games with friends so they saw modelled how others lose, plus we play some co-operative games too so they lose but not against other players but the game. Bascially, just lots of game playing!

Thanks for the suggestions. Going to try some new extra short games.

Being a bad loser should have consequences, or being a good one have benefits.

Can you explain more? Not clear what you mean or what that would look like in practice?

Keep playing games. Model losing. Ask family to play games. Ask them to model losing. Use Social Stories.

Don’t worry about friendships. She’ll soon learn no one wants to play with a bad loser

My advice would be two fold:

1. Start her in a competitive sport like athletics or swimming, so that when she inevitably loses you can say “but you didn’t swim fast enough to win”
2. Play a game called “The Sorest Loser” where the ‘winner’ is the one who can perform the biggest, most ridiculous performance of a sore loser- inevitably it starts everyone laughing, and undermines their antics.

If it's in company with other kids and you're there, I'd call her away and be giving her clear direction on how to deal with frustration at losing. Maybe running around the playground backwards or some other silly thing to re-direct the frustration. Would a stress ball or something like that help?

At 7yo though I would expect to give my son a re-direct reminder and then I'd time out for continued stropping.

It is really good that you've spotted it and want to do something about it. I definitely would be discouraging my kids inviting sore loser children to our house for play dates or parties.

She does actually does several sports, but I’ll for sure look up that game. Sounds like a great idea and a good trigger for talking about losing and getting fun from the process of a game.

I read it in Playful Parenting

a lot of top sports people struggle with losing. That desire to win is what gives them that extra edge and willingness to go the extra mile. It’s not a bad thing she hates to lose. She’ll develop a better veneer over time. Also there is the delay that lockdown will have had, as interactions with other children would have been much reduced at s key developmental stage - so she will behave in someways more like a 5 year old would. If you’re worried about peer friendships then I would leave that to natural consequence like a pp recommended rather than trying to parent/punish that behaviour out of her.

I really like these suggestions.

Empathise, be kind, model the behaviour you want to see

I think a lot of parents can shame, be annoyed or even laugh at their kids when they feel like this, it doesn't help

I have a sore loser and he's 11 now and getting to be pretty tolerable when he loses.

One thing that was important for him was acknowledging that it does not feel nice to lose, while still being clear about what acceptable behavior is. We say thing like "I appreciate that you are frustrated that you tried your hardest and still didn't win. You are absolutely allowed to feel frustrated, but you cannot act out of that frustration by doing XYZ," XYZ usually being throwing the JoyCon across the room or swiping the Monopoly board, money and pieces to the floor.

At its worst, when he would see that he was probably going to lose and start to kick off, we would give him a choice, find a way to stay calm and continue playing, or remove himself to his room to calm down. If he chose to stay and still kicked off, he would be told that he would not be able to join us for the next round of Mario Kart or Throw Throw Burrito, or whatever, as this was something that he was not able to do sensibly right now. Stuff still got thrown and there was still some shouting and stomping and snotty tears, but eventually he did figure out that losing his mind over losing a game does not benefit him.

We were also told to shake the winners hand- think it comes from.team sports

Modelling the right behaviour is obviously a good suggestion, but I’d also talk to her about it.

Not in the immediate aftermath, when she’s still frustrated and unable to take anything in, but later when she’s cooled off.

I have two tennis players and when they were first starting out, albeit younger than 7, they (well, one more than the other), would demonstrate some of these behaviours.

So later, we’d chat about it. Ask a few questions.

‘Looking back, what do you think about your reaction to the outcome of that match?’

‘What do you think people watching might have thought?’

’If you’d won that game, and your opponent had reacted the way you did, what would you think of them?’

Get them to think about it. It’s conversational, and it’s not telling them off. It gets them thinking.

And then talk. It’s OK, in fact, it’s really normal to feel disappointed after a loss. But you’re not always going to win. Nobody always wins. Not even the best players in the world. So you need to think ahead about how you will react IF you lose, so that you don’t embarrass yourself. Being a gracious loser shows real strength of character and impresses people’…. yada, yada…

We found conversations like this really helpful, and the behaviour was soon knocked (metaphorically) out of them because they could understand themselves why it wasn’t a good look.

My dd 7 is the same and it’s quite detrimental to play dates. I have spent years and years modelling, praising, chatting it through but it’s just not clicking.
I wonder if it is the long lockdown at an integral part of her development. 🤔

My dh is still a bad loser approaching 70. He was a hugely competitive athlete in many sports in his heyday and not wanting to lose drove him way past the pain barrier etc in order to win. He would never give up. So being competitive can be a good thing once its reined in a bit.
Get her to practice some sentences to say such as Well Done or Good win. She doesn't need to feel it just say it by rote. Practice at home when ye play games together where everyone has to congratulate the winner. I found with my dc watching sports events on TV helped. I would say: Oh that's very disappointing for that team or that guy ..isn't it great he can shake their hand even though he is so sad. Sometimes players lie on the pitch totally devastated...thanks ok as they have put in so much effort but she can see them get up again and pull themselves together.
Losing isn't easy for those who care.