Bad Loser

[Anice]

Can anyone give me some tips on dealing with a bad loser?
DS2 (almost 7 years old) takes it really badly whenever he loses a game (board game/ football game/you name it). He's angry, upset and he takes it out on himself by punching himself. Its not even about attention because he tries to hide himself when it happens.
If it was DS1, I'd sympathetically tell him to stop giving himself such a hard time and at the same time tell him off but this just seems to make Ds2 worse.
Any ideas or similar experiences would be great whether they are tough love or masses of understanding and guiding him through this phase.

bump

My son went through a stage of being an incredibly bad loser when he was about 6/7 yrs old.
He would cry and scream etc, and especially hated losing against his younger sister (whyo for some reasons always tend to win when tye play cards etc).

He is much better now. What helped was:

• time (as usual )
• playing in a football team with good coach who didn't treally mind when they lost (and they used to lose a lot).

As far as your ds is concerned, I think that I'd try to be really sympathetic and cuddly, given that he is trying to "punish" himslef.