Teach your kids to win at losing
Sounds
different, Right! Most of the human beings hate to loose and kids are no
exception from it. They want to win each and every game or competition he/she
faces and often gets angry and disappointed when they loose, whether it may be a
cycle race or loosing a school grade. But it is not always possible and
necessary that they will win all the time. If they do not know the art of handling
the loss, they end up developing frustration, feeling low self-esteem, and
sometimes loose friends too! So this is the high time for parents to teach the most
important lesson of life “how to accept the loss without lowering self-esteem
and feeling guilt”. This crucial lesson at the early stage of life
gives them the right foundation to cope up with the competitive world when they
grow up.
Here
are few tips that may help your children to develop good sportsmanship:
1. While playing competitive games, always remind your
child that having fun is more important than winning or loosing the game and
teach him/her to appreciate the winner even if they loose the game
2. Always appreciate and emphasis the efforts made by
your child not the outcomes
3. Read them some inspirational stories of successful
people who raised from their failures. This will develop a perception in
child’s mind that few loses doesn’t mean failure.
4. When coming to studies, sometimes parents fixate
on the loss more than kids. Avoid blaming your child by showing examples of
other kids. Appreciate every little effort made by your child and give him/her enough
confidence and support that he/she can perform better in future.
5. Most importantly, children do not do what we say,
but they do what they see. So as a parent, we must show them the right example
by showing our self-control and reaction to a failure or a stressful situation
with grace.
Of course,
I do not mean here to say not to encourage your kids to win, but to understand
the fine line between encouraging our kids to ‘play to win’ and ‘preparing
them for failure’. Certainly we must encourage our kids to do well in
everything, but at the same time make sure that they understand, “a
failure or loss is not the end of the world, it’s just another chance to try it
again”.
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Veru important topic for Parents jyothi. Well written. Everyone will tell parents to encourage kids for every small effort but no one will talk about how to prepare kids to handle failures in practical life.
ReplyDeleteTrue Ramya! It needs lot of patience and practice to plant this idea in kids mind and in this process even parents might face failures and so it applies for us too!! :P
DeleteJyothi beautiful write up.
ReplyDeleteThanku Sumana :)
DeleteGood One Jyothi :)
ReplyDelete