Helping children to develop sportsmanship and also how to tolerate losing is not easy. This is especially true for children with extra struggles to manage their emotions. It is difficult for parents when boardgames such as Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, or Sorry turn from a fun time with your children into a nightmare. As many children set very high standards for games (such as to win every time) it can be challenging to help them play games and make the process fun and enjoyable.
There are several strategies that I find can be helpful to improve children's sportsmanship and their ability to cope with losing:
1. Frontload or pre-teach prior to starting a game with your child that the game is for fun and prepare them that anyone could win.
2. Teach your child coping skills for when they get upset that they can use for when things don't go the way that they would like in a game. These coping strategies can include taking deep breaths, using imagery, doing progressive relaxation, talking about their emotions, counting to 10, taking a break from the activity for a while, say "Unlucky, better luck next time." etc.
3. I often build these coping strategies into games with children. For example: If a child lands on a chute in Chutes and Ladders in my office, he or she has to go down the chute, but if they can take a deep breath and say "unlucky, better luck next time" the child gets a bonus roll. As an adult, I model the same skill, but do not earn the bonus roll.
4. At Quest, we also play a lot of games that are cooperative in nature and would be difficult to keep score in so that it is difficult for children to focus on winning. If children get stuck on winning, we stop them and provide bonuses if they can remember that we play for "fun" or if they can demonstrate some type of good sportsmanship such as telling a peer "good game" or give a high five. We also teach our campers what types of behaviors constitute good sportsmanship and then reward those. For example: for rock climbing we might do a relay race and then at the end announce that the winners were the team that had the best sportsmanship (which may or may not be the team that climbed the fastest that day).
5. I also focus a lot with children on the process and the effort they put out versus the actual outcome. By switching to this focus on effort and the process I find that children tend to feel more proud of themselves since they have a lot more control over whether they put forth effort in a competition and a lot less control over what happened next.
While learning to be a good sport takes time, it is an important life skill and it is worth investing in this area with your child. Children do learn from the examples we set so we can do a lot in how we approach sports and competitions to help set children up for success. Being able to be a member of a team and be a good winner and also a good loser is important for relationships and future success.
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