Teaching Kids to Lose

Coming in first place in whatever you are doing always feels great. Whether it’s a competition of some kind, a game that you’re playing, or a race, first place and winning is what you’re striving for. You don’t join a competition to lose (although you may not expect to win depending on what the activity is) - you join it to try your best and hopefully win. However, there is usually only one winner and often it’s not you.

Some people are more competitive than others when it comes to winning. Whether or not you feel like you always have to win, you should absolutely know how to lose. There are far more losers in the world than there are winners. If you don’t learn how to lose, you’re going to have a very rough time in life. Teaching your kids how to lose is an important lesson that you should be working on with them from their youngest age.

This doesn’t mean that you should teach your child to try to lose. You should absolutely make sure they understand that they should be trying their hardest, practicing and learning, and constantly getting better. However, you should teach them that losing is something that will happen. Gracefully taking defeat will make you a better competitor and more people will respect you for it.

One of the easiest ways to teach a child how to lose is with the help of board games. While it’s often easier to let your child always win, it’s important for them to lose as well. If you’re playing a game that isn’t just straight luck (i.e. Candy Land), then you should win against your child sometimes. When they lose, help them to understand that it’s okay to lose as it’s just a game. Teach them it’s okay to be sad or disappointed to lose, but they shouldn’t have a tantrum or freak out about it.

You can show them the way to express their feelings when you lose. Explain that you’re sad or upset that you lost, but that you’re going to try harder next time. Perhaps explain a strategy from the game where you failed and how you could have done better with it. In other words, teach your child to learn from losing in order to better themselves. You’re not going to win every game, but the more that you work on it and practice the more likely you are to win in the future.

Help kids learn to lose when playing video games as well. They need to understand that you’re going to have to constantly work on something to get better at it in order to win. Some people may be lucky to be naturally talented at something. For the rest of us, we have to spend multiple hours and try to get better at it. In video games, this may mean that you have to play a level or boss for many hours in order to beat it.

When you lose, you want to congratulate the winner (unless it’s the computer/console), but you also want to learn how you can do better. Try to understand how you failed at something and start planning and working towards becoming better. If it’s a sport, determine if you need to train harder, or if you need to improve your strategy. Work both smarter and harder so that you can figure out how to get over the hump.

Losing is never fun, but it’s something that you’ll often experience. Teach your child how they can gracefully accept that loss and how they can come back and try again. Losing is the beginning step to winning.