Learning to lose games, graciously

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Has anyone successfully taught his/her child to lose graciously?

My son is chronologically 7, but emotionally closer to 3 or 4. He has huge fits when he even thinks he might lose. We are building towards tolerance for losing by having him trail sometimes in the middle of games before we let him catch up. He cannot even handle that. He is not very interested in other children (although this is improving a little) and does not have or want play dates of any kind. Other than whatever they do gamewise in school the only practice he has is playing with my husband and me.

We have tried explaining that if the game has plenty of time left, it is premature to get upset. We have told him that even if he does lose one game, it is not the end of the world. This does not work either. We model good sportsmanship when we lose and point out how we are not fussing.

As background: He has only started caring about game outcomes in the last year or so. Prior to this he looked at all games as group efforts and would play until everyone finished/won. If we tried to quit after one person won, he got upset. He no longer does this, but I am adding it for background in case that helps.

Here is a previous thread that has some good ideas:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt170807.html

Thanks, Bombaloo.

I wanted to add that my DH, not AS, but highly competative was a very sore loser growing up - in fact his family still jokes about it. Needless to say, we have had many discussions about how to best help our son 11AS not be a sore loser and he is much better than his father at that age. One of the things my husband pointed out was that games of chance are torture for him, and my son readily agrees. The chance factor removes all control and makes the winning/losing not about skill or playing the game, but chance. For someone who likes to maintain control that feels tortorous to them and takes a lot of fun out of the game. On the other hand, skill games means my son loses more, because he is often less skilled. I think it helped for my son to have another child close in age to play lots of games with. My son loves complex games. He did better at games like checkers at age 7 and began learning chess at 9. He also likes to play games with the family like Carcasonne, and Dominion, which he also learned around age 9. One of our new favorite games is Ticket To Ride. It is hard when you work on a train route and someone blocks it. Due to his ADHD, he has never done well with long, monotonous games like Monopoly and Life (two games my daughter likes) and usually quits about halfway through We have a group of friends who we spend a weekend every summer with and just play games. He has learned lots of rules of behavior about playing games there. Time, effort, patience, laying out the expectations clearly, and lots of game playing are the key, I think.

We are currently working on playing respectfully in games. He has learned that if he isn't winning, then he can play vengefully, blocking other players, and doing things in the game that don't help him, but keep the other person from doing well. This is definitely not a good thing.

We don't play board games with dd5.

Just. Don't.

We do play video games where there is no clear winner or loser as a way of working up to board games. IT also helps her fine motor skills.

Here is how we are doing it, she is pretty obsessed with super mario world. There is a 2 player mode where the players do not play at the same time, and instead sort of go one at a time to unlock the boards on the map. While it is really clear that one player "maybe" better than the other (And she sometimes gets miffy over that) you aren't DIRECTLY competing with the other person. It's sort of like an adjacent competition. So when wever she beats a board we go "yay, you did it!" And when she doesn't we go " hey look, no problem. Just try again on you next turn" like wise if we die and don't beat the board we just go "oh fooey, just have to try again." We can already see that she is improving her attitude when she doesn't beat a board. She used to flip out like a 14 year old boy and throw the controller. Now she just grumbles a bunch and tries again. We might e try candy land again sometime soon.

I think part of the key is that turns are longer and the progress is measured on sort of a yes/no metric. Either you beat the board or you didn't, there isn't a grey area. Each board is like a minigame with yourself. In the larger picture, you ARE competing against the other person, but in the short term it's more of a self improvement practice. In the long run this could be translated to a turn based board game that requires some sort of skill. I think that any game that is more random will be more frustrating. If there is something to be improved on and mastered, then I think that will be a better choice.

I don't think she will ever be a really gracious loser. My husband is still a really poor loser. In fact I Refuse to play board games with him, I am competitive, but don't really care if I lose or win. He is comptetivie and he REALLY cares if he loses. He was the one who thought of the video game idea, I think he "Gets" where she is coming from on this one.

Thank you for the posts and the link.

*sigh* I guess I was hoping there was some magic trick to this. I made DS a PowerPoint, and I guess we will just have to continue to slog through it. DS does OK on Facebook type games, because it is not a win/loss thing and the one he plays is not frustrating unless it fails to load or something.

At this point we almost always take a dive on the skill games, so the luck ones are the ones we can't manage at all. I do not know if losing intentionally is the right thing to do, but it at least builds sustained attention skills, turn taking skills etc. We try to challenge him by winning early on in the game (knowing we will let him recover and we will take a dive later) and really he should figure out by now, that he will always win. I think he is so agitated by the prospect of losing that he is not seeing the pattern, that I think normally he would be smart enough to figure out.

I don't want to give in all the way and go back to letting him win the whole time, because I do think he needs to work on the skill, so that someday if he wants to, he can play with other kids.

I vacillate between thinking I am too harsh for what he can handle and too lenient for what he needs.

It wasn't until we started working with these materials http://socialthinking.com/books-product ... curriculum that my daughter got "better." It was the first time she realized that her behavior made other people have thoughts and feelings....ABOUT HER! Before that, she just couldn't understand how storming around the room, yelling, knocking over chairs, etc, was any of anyone else's concern because she was not "hurting" anyone.

She is still not "good," but she is getting better. She is about to turn 7 and is probably 2 years or so behind in this area. She is in 2nd grade and acts the way I think most kindergartners do.

Another thing that helps, just a little, is to say "Games are for fun and if you are not having fun, then we will not play the game." Sometimes, though, this is an escape for her when we are "playing" for therapeutic purposes IOW "Mommy, games are for fun and I am not having fun, so we should put the game away!" But it does work when she is playing wii with her brother and getting frustrated. You just have to be willing to stand your ground and take the game away if the attitude doesn't improve, no matter what kind of tantrum ensues.