It’s easy to win, or should I say, easy to handle winning. But one of the most important traits to instill in children is finding a way to be a good loser. It’s certainly a lot more difficult to teach, but has far more rewards when it is properly instilled.
How does your child handle it when things go wrong?
Coping with losing can relate to all areas of life. Success and happiness are based on resiliency and the ability to deal with adversity in life. Children who don’t learn how to lose properly can have problems later in life when dealing with life’s many setbacks.
Of course it’s easy to be happy when you are doing well, but how do kids react when setbacks happen in life? What happens when they lose a board game? Are they quick to recover or do they respond in a ball of anger and self-pity?
One common trait among kids who are more resilient is that they have at least one grown-up in their life that cares for them and is truthful with them. This support will help counteract the effects of bad things that happen in life. A grown-up can help kids navigate through the bad times and instill the idea that things will get better.
Another attribute of resilient kids is that they think about the world in a different way than others. When they are challenged with hardship, they don’t distort their thinking and catastrophize about all of life being bad. They have the strength and vision to see that they can get past setbacks in life.
Show your kids how to be nice when they lose. If you help them with their perception of life’s difficulties, they will be able to see things in a more positive, reasonable, and hopeful way.
For a more in-depth understanding about how to raise resilient kids, find the original article here:
How to raise good losers
