Reply to My 7 YO DS is a Horrible Loser

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "My 7 YO DS is a Horrible Loser"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Help.  He's a second child, so always playing catch-up; intense personality; very competitive.  Mom and Dad both HS/College athletes so we're certainly not non-competitive.  I believe competition can be healthy and sports can teach many things but we definately have a problem on our hands and I'm looking for practical suggestions.

DS throws a fit and gets nasty about almost any loss.  I.e.--If I beat him at checkers, he'll throw a mini-tantrum.   He can handle losses to older kids fine but where he expects to win and doesn't, he's likely to lose his cool in some way.

I've tried the following:  before we play a game, I ask him if I need to let him win (so that he's not kidding himself that he wins all the time); I quit when he starts to act badly; ignore the tantrums.  I've recently added a positive reinforcement program to the mix (every time you lose gracefully you earn a star-- 5 stars= a treat).  My hope is even if he let's me win to earn a treat it would be contrived practice at appropriate behavior.

We also looked up how many loses Michael Jordan had over his career and talked about that--losing is part of all sports even for the best athletes in the world etc. etc.

What else can I be doing?  Any great books on this topic?  Anyone else had success turning this around.  We're making progress but S L O W L Y.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics