Failing to let your children lose

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I’m sure there are valuable lessons children can learn from playing board games with their parents. Lessons like strategising, dealing with defeat, and having dignity in success.

Unfortunately, though, my kids will not be learning these valuable lessons from me. Because I have failed. Oh, how dismally I have failed.

Let’s start with my youngest child. She’s not terribly easy to teach ‘dealing with defeat’. This is simply because my daughter is not a good loser at all. In fact, my daughter is not a loser full stop. Because you cannot be a loser if you never actually lose, and this little girl has never, ever admitted that she has lost. She’ll insist she is victorious no matter what the game’s outcome and will vehemently deny any evidence to the contrary.

“Okay, my counter is at the end. I win!” I’ll say. “No! You didn’t win!” she’ll reply. “I’m putting my counter there first!”

“You can’t put your counter there,” I’ll tell her. “The game is over. Look! I won.”

“No you didn’t!” she’ll insist, thumping the table and crying. “It doesn’t count! Your move doesn’t count!”

Winners and losers
Now, before you think that perhaps it’s just board games that are the issue, let me tell you this: when we play ‘spot the yellow car’ and I spot a yellow car, my daughter will deny that the car I spotted was really yellow. With her, there is not much room for negotiation.

As for my son, well, he’s not a loser either. But this is because he genuinely beats me at every game we play. And I mean every game. Every. Single. Time. Whether it’s Monopoly, Scrabble or Tic Tac Toe, he thrashes me within a couple of moves.

There are no life lessons to teach my son about humility, setbacks or defeat. The only lesson to be learnt is how quickly Mum can be defeated. And the answer to that is very quickly indeed.

A mother’s conundrum
My youngest child can certainly be beaten. And, unlike her sister, when she loses she is brave and uncomplaining. But then I glimpse her disappointed face and wonder guiltily if I should have let her win. And then I decide it’s character building for her to lose and that I was right not to let her use ‘cherpy’ as a word. But then I think wistfully of what a sweet child she is and I decide she doesn’t need character building at all. And finally I realise that she’s happily watching TV and I’ve spent the last 20 minutes agonising over a board game, and I know that I’m the only loser here.

So the board game is not an effective learning tool in our household. The only thing it has taught me is how very much I hate board games. Except, to be honest, I kind of knew that already.

Read more from Kerri at Life & Other Crises