🙋🏻♂️One of the more common issues that comes up when families play games together is: how to deal with kids getting upset because they lost.
🧠 losing is a skill. Knowing how to lose someone is something we have to practice. And due to their age and general abilities, kids end up losing a lot more than adults, and that’s really difficult! The number one thing that we can do to help our kids in their situation is model how to lose.
🤷🏻♂️Whether or not you feel comfortable losing on purpose, is up to you, but we can model how to lose so that our kids have an idea of what to do. If we want our kids to set the controller down and take a break, then we should model how to do that. If we want to show them how to lose graciously and congratulate a winner, then we should model how to do that, too. Whatever it is you’d like your child to do when they lose, go out of your way to do those things in front of your child. Our kids need to see that we get upset, too, and that we can deal with these emotions. Then, they’ll have a model to follow.
⭐️Here’s another idea: if you are playing a competitive game with your child where you are playing against NPCs (computer generated characters) try playing together with your child as a team. That way, if you do lose to the computer characters, you have each other to commiserate with.
🤯Another idea: when playing against your child and CPUs, if you know that your child is going to lose, lose along with them and let a CPU win. This way, you can both share your frustration about losing, and you can provide how to deal with that frustration. But because you also lost, the emotions are less heightened because you are a “loser “along with your kiddo.
🙌🏻Finally, please consider the use of accessible features in games. Although some might view these as “cheats” they are really ways to make the game more equitable for all players. In Mario kart for example, you can pause the game while playing and enable accessibility features that can make the game less frustrating and more fun. Yes, we want our kids to learn the rules of the game, but if your ultimate goal is to bond and have fun with our kids, then that should be our focus.
