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

Presumably that means he spent some weekends being apart from his mother at a very young age which was probably traumatic for a baby.

He needs to lose more - it’s a skill that has to be learnt. My DS was exactly like this at exactly the age you describe, and we just kept playing games and letting him win or lose naturally….we modelled calm behaviour if we lost ourselves and if he lost and melted down we ignored it where possible. If there was behaviour like hitting out etc we obviously dealt with that (we used time outs which worked for our kids). But basically he just had to practice losing more to get better at it. He also joined a football team which I think helped hugely, the other kids didn’t meltdown when they lost so it was a great peer lesson for him!

My brother was like this, haha. He did grow out of it and is a pretty normal human now!
Maybe praise him for trying hard/taking part in things as well as when he does well. Carry on playing games so he can see how the rest of you behave when you lose. Never fix things so he wins!

As a child, our father would make fun of us children if we were losing at a game. He thought it was amusing and created a party atmosphere. This was in the 1950s (I'm in my 70s) and I never forgave him for it - it was humiliating. It got to the stage where if I didn't think I had a good chance of winning then I wouldn't play and, as an adult, party games always make me seize up inside. He died when I was 14 so I never had a chance to man up to him. Anyway, this has absolutely nothing to do with your little one but I can relate to all the different emotions going on!

One of mine was like this, we made the rule that winner tidies up to try and make winning less appealing!

Nope