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The game is going beautifully.
Everyone is laughing, taking turns and having fun… until someone realises they’re probably not going to win.
Suddenly there are tears. “That’s not fair!” Someone wants to change the rules. Maybe the pieces get pushed across the table, or the game ends with a child storming off and declaring they’re never playing again.
Sound familiar?
Losing can be genuinely hard for children. And while it can be tempting to see these moments simply as poor sportsmanship, there is often much more going on.
Playing even a simple game asks children to wait, take turns, follow rules, cope with unpredictability, manage excitement, watch somebody else succeed and deal with things not going the way they hoped.
Then, at the end of all that, we ask them to lose gracefully too!
For some children, that’s a lot.
Think about everything that can happen during a board game. You wait while everyone else takes their turn. You draw the card you didn’t want. Someone overtakes you. Your brilliant plan doesn’t work. And after all that… someone else wins.
Games naturally create little moments of uncertainty and disappointment. They’re also a wonderful way for children to practise turn-taking, following rules, flexible thinking, problem-solving, communication, impulse control and managing frustration.
So when a child struggles with losing, it doesn’t necessarily mean they simply need to “learn to lose”. They may be trying to manage several developing skills all at once.
Children show that difficulty in different ways too. One might cry, another gets angry, another insists somebody cheated, while some children decide they simply don’t want to play at all.
Rather than only looking at what happens when the game ends, it can be helpful to think about what made the game difficult in the first place.
We’ve probably all deliberately lost to a child at some point. And sometimes that’s perfectly okay, particularly with younger children or when we’re introducing a new game and want the experience to feel achievable.
But if we always engineer the result, children miss the opportunity to experience something really important:
I wanted to win. I didn’t. I didn’t like that feeling… and then I was okay.
Games can give children a relatively safe place to experience disappointment and gradually learn what to do with it.
The aim isn’t to teach children not to care about winning. Wanting to win is part of what makes games exciting! Instead, we’re helping them learn that they can feel disappointed when something doesn’t go their way and, little by little, recover from it.
There’s no magic phrase that suddenly makes losing easy, but there are a few things we can do to make game-playing a more manageable place to practise.
Start with shorter games. Losing after five or ten minutes can be much easier to manage than losing after investing 45 minutes in a game. Games with quick rounds can be particularly useful because another opportunity is just around the corner.
Model losing yourself. Let children see what it looks like when things don’t go your way. It doesn’t need to be a big performance — a simple “Ohhh, I really thought I had you that time. Good game!” can be enough. We’re showing them that we can be disappointed without the disappointment taking over.
Notice more than the winner. Talk about the clever move, the patient waiting, the funny moment or the problem somebody solved along the way. It helps broaden the experience beyond winning = success and losing = failure.
Don’t lecture in the moment. When a child is already overwhelmed, it’s probably not the best time for a lesson on sportsmanship. Sometimes “You really wanted to win that one” is enough. There will be time to talk about what happened once everyone is calm again.
And finally, know when to stop. If a child is tired, hungry or already becoming frustrated, squeezing in “just one more game” might not be the best time to practise coping with disappointment.
There is also another way to practise many of these skills that I particularly love…
I’ve always had a soft spot for cooperative games. Instead of playing against each other, everyone works towards the same goal. That small change can make a huge difference, particularly for children who find competition difficult.
Children still need to wait, take turns and follow the rules. They still need to communicate, make decisions and adapt when things don’t go according to plan. The difference is that instead of me versus you, it becomes us versus the game.
For some children, that can take away just enough pressure to make playing together enjoyable again, while still giving them plenty of opportunities to practise all those important game-playing skills.
And importantly, cooperative doesn’t mean everybody automatically wins. Sometimes you don’t find the treasure in time, your plan doesn’t work, or the game simply beats you. There’s still disappointment to deal with, you’re just experiencing it together.
Instead of “You beat me!”, the conversation can become “Ohhh, we were so close. What should we try next time?”
That’s one of the things I love most about cooperative play. Losing hasn’t disappeared, but it feels different when nobody around the table is the person who caused you to lose.
Gnomes at Night is a lovely example of this. Two players work together to move magnetic gnomes through a maze and collect treasure, but there’s a clever twist: each player sees a different maze, so neither person can solve it alone.
You have to talk to each other, listen, explain what you can see and work out the next move together. All those skills we want children to practise are naturally happening as part of the game.
We’ve even heard from a Starfish parent who chose Gnomes at Night because her daughters often argued when playing competitive games. Having them work towards the same goal completely changed the experience for them.
And I think that’s a great way to look at cooperative games. We’re not removing the challenge; we’re changing the environment in which children get to practise it.
Cooperative games aren’t about protecting children from ever having to lose. Ultimately, we want children to be able to enjoy competitive games too, and to gradually become more comfortable with the ups and downs that come with them.
I like to think of cooperative games as another tool, and sometimes a really useful stepping stone. A child can practise waiting, taking turns, following rules, communicating and adapting when things go wrong, without also having to manage the fact that the person sitting opposite them just won.
As those skills become easier, we can introduce manageable competition too. That might mean a quick game with several rounds before moving onto something longer or more strategic.
There doesn’t need to be a rush.
It’s easy to think a successful game is one where everyone reaches the end happily, shakes hands and says “good game!” But progress often looks much smaller than that.
Maybe your child loses a round and stays at the table. Maybe they’re disappointed, but this time the pieces don’t go flying. Perhaps they need a break and then come back for another go. Or maybe, for the first time, they manage to congratulate someone else when they win.
And with cooperative games, success might simply be two siblings who usually argue over games spending fifteen minutes working together.
Those are wins too.
Learning to lose isn’t about teaching children not to care whether they win. It’s about gradually helping them discover that things won’t always go the way they hoped, disappointment can be managed, and when they’re ready, they can have another go.
And sometimes, a little game around the kitchen table is the perfect place to practise.
Kirstie
Kirstie Wishart M.Ed (Special Education).
Owner and founder of The Starfish Store. Kirstie’s professional life has included: teaching (in both public and private schools in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand), lecturer and subject coordinator at the University of Wollongong, Educational consultant (working with children and young people with a trauma background), OoHC Case Work Manager, and Specialist Tutor (working with children and young people with significant learning difficulties and/or disabilities).
40 Proprioceptive activities for the classroom. Simple and practical activities to incorporate Proprioceptive into the classroom. 16 A4 sheets to print for your classroom, therapy space or home.