5 year old kicking off if he doesn’t win

[Midlifecrisis2026]

I have a 5 year old stepson. Me, him and his sister were playing hungry hippos yesterday and he started crying as we were getting more ‘food’ than him and he basically wasn’t winning.
he started proper bawling, OTT, over emphasised crocodile tears, he threw the game in the air, walked in the dining room screaming and tried to throw a chair in his frustration.

His dad tried to calm him down but he wasn’t having any of it.

he’s got this thing about always winning and will cheat to ensure he does, or blatantly lie that he has.

he’s going into year 1 at school.

he’s very bright and will get praise for doing things right. Have we caused this? He’s hit a child at school too in frustration.

generally he’s very well mannered and well behaved but when it comes to winning, he’s obsessed.

how would you have managed yesterday’s behaviour and this behaviour going forward?
His mum has told me she calls it ‘unnecessary tears’ when he cries for no reason and doesn’t stand for it. I wouldn’t say she’s particularly soft on him when he plays up.

thanks

No answers, just saying my friend's son was like this and we always had to make sure he won. Either we'd ignore his cheating or we'd deliberately lose just so he wouldn't get pissed off. Friend use to smile and praise him for being such a clever boy when he won and I think that was the main problem, he wanted the fuss.

Mine was a table flipper when young. We sacked off board games until he was a bit more in control of himself.

My brother was like this and my mum had absolutely no time for it. Even playing Old Maid we knew when he had the Old Maid card because his bottom lip kept trembling! My mum sat him down, explained that there would be only one winner, and lots of losers, just like in life, and he just had to try hard, or suck it up. She also stressed many times that nobody liked a poor loser and if he carried on flipping the Monopoly bank up, or crying, or kicking off when he was losing, then he'd end up a lonely little boy with no friends.
That seemed to work. He always had a competitive edge, especially with me, but stopped with the histrionics.

Thanks, I purposely don’t want to fix things so he’ll win as that would just make it worse and it’s not fair of course. Maybe he is addicted to the praise like you mention.

Thanks, his dad has basically explained this too - yesterday and in the past - but it doesn’t seem to have gone in 😖
hoping he’ll grow out of it.

Yes I might have to do that which is a shame as he loves board games and plays a lot with his mum too.

was he particularly tired or hungry at that time?

maybe when he is on good form, give lots of opportunities to do micro win and loses eg playing rock paper scissors. No point in tantruming as he gets another chance immediately.
I also practice this with my sons by making two cars race (neither are mine or his) and I show the winning car saying ‘better luck next time’ and the losing car saying ‘thanks, well done!’
maybe you and partner can model this a bit then invite step son to join in.

Love this.

I know a poor loser. It is annoying trying to play games with him. I would not want him as a friend, I would want him on my sports team though because he is good at sport.

Pandering to it is a massive mistake - you either stop playing with him or you play and give the praise to the gracious loser and ignore the winner. Maybe team games like Pictionary?

My DS was a bit like this at 5 years old. He was also a perfectionist.
His primary school had an afterschool club where the children just played board games for an hour specifically for children like him. Within a term he was massively better; the more he played the more he realised that winning all the time wasn’t the reason to play.

Talk to him about it when you’ve not been playing a game etc

its ok to not enjoy losing and striving to win is actually a good characteristic, but cheating and not dealing with losing is not

so learning how to deal with his own feeling when losing and not cheating is where he needs help on how to deal with this

but how you go about this depends on you and him

As someone who works with this age group, this is all about resilience and self confidence. I would set boundaries before hand, “this is just a game”, we are having fun, if it stops being fun you need to stop playing”. Pause the game before he kicks off, when you first notice the signs of stress. Take him to one side away from others and the game and give him a choice “you can calm down and keep playing or you can do something else and X and I will keep playing”. Reiterate that it’s nice to win but actually you are just playing for fun.

In addition to this make a big deal about losing gracefully yourself and praise others for losing well. Also focus on him building resilience and self esteem. Lots of challenge activities that are just beyond his skill set that he does independently or with someone’s support. Lots of praise for giving it a go no matter the outcome.

Let him win sometimes - everyone deserves a win ☺️

Talking before during and after about what might happen. Keeping upbeat and “fun” aspect rather than winner or loser .
It’s hard at that age .
one of mine is still known as “board flipper”
due to being a bad loser when younger .
Gree up into a happy young adult and laughs about it now !

Thank you, that’s very helpful. And he does genuinely win a lot!
he’ll be enjoying the game and then if he sees you’re ahead of him, like in snakes and ladders for example, he’ll close the board and say he’s not playing anymore or lie about how many he’s rolled on the dice.

Does he have a favourite sports team? Maybe look at how they loose. “How did England behave when they lost in the World Cup?” “How did Argentina behave?” “Which team would you be proud to be in?” also “Just because it was getting hard do you think England should have stopped playing?”

He is a bit young for theoretical discussions but relating it back to something he might know will help. You could show him some edited clips and people’s reactions to them.

Some people needs lots of help and practice learning to lose, that's all. It's hard for him. He will have his big emotions about it. Don't be scared of big emotions - it's just his honest response right now. No need to overreact yourself. So long as you keep presenting him with the experience and he can practice and get better at losing, rather than getting afraid of it yourself and pandering to him, then he will get there eventually.

One in our family just took a long time to build up to losing well, and the other kids eventually said to her, oh we just don't want to play with you because you ruin it with crying, and that was hard to work through (but true, tbh). But that's what these games are for, in part, to practice this stuff with low stakes. You don't want to defer this experience to the first time he doesn't get a job, or gets dumped!

My youngest was like this when she was that sort of age. The worst game was "Shopping List" because we couldn't even let her win as you just don't know what you will turn over. (I'm not a panderer but she was very little so i think it's ok to let them win sometimes, but not all the time. ) She would get incandescent with rage, stamp her foot and yell that we were "cheating".

She just grew out of it in the end. She's still very competitive but that seems to have redirected itself as determination and wanting to get top marks at school, which is no bad thing.

Thank you. Good idea. He doesn’t have a team but think his mum wants to get him into football.

As with most small child behaviour, it's not about the thing. This isn't about Hungry Hippos.

He feels like he's not "winning" in a more general sense, and like things aren't fair more widely.

Have a ponder on that. It's never the thing, you have to look at what is going on behind the thing, he's communicating with you like a five year old would because he doesn't have the language, and to be fair most adults never develop this skill particularly well either.

We had this issue and switched to cooperative games rather than ones with an outright winner- outfoxed was a good one for us.

Play games with quick turnaround where it can be 'fun' if you 'lose'. For example Pop Up Pirates.
Don't play long games where there is time to get over invested.
Model being a good loser.

My daughter was a bit like this, she’d get upset if she lost. But has grown out of it. We continued to play lots of games and modelling losing . We also found co-operative games helpful, where everyone works together to beat the game. Gamewtight make a few of them, I think. “Outfoxed” was a firm favourite.

Does he happily share and take turns with other things? If so, then he might be able to grasp the concept that nobody can expect to win a board game every time, and that others deserve to win sometimes too.

Yes we play that one too but he would cheat to get the pirate to pop up too 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yes he is good at sharing actually