Winning & Losing with Grace

I may be the odd duck out in the parenting world but I think teaching our kids how to lose is extremely important. If you’re my age or older, you likely grew up in a time where we kept track of our scores at soccer games. We didn’t get a passing grade, if we didn’t finish our work correctly and on time. We tried out for teams and school musicals and not everyone made the cut. We learned to appreciate winning gracefully and learned to accept and learn from our losses. Fast forward to today and I’m raising my kids in a world where competition is taboo and everyone gets a medal for showing up. I can appreciate the “We are all winners,” concept for my three and four year old, but at what point are we distorting reality for our children?

While I was aware of this no winners and no losers concept, it became abundantly clear to me at my son's most recent soccer game. The boys on the sidelines were commenting on how many goals they had scored in the first half of the game, the coach quickly jumped in to say, “We don’t talk about the goals we score, we just play.” One of the boys looked puzzled and asked why they don’t keep score at their soccer games; the coach simply said it isn’t important to keep track. A few other parents who overheard the conversation were obviously as caught off guard as I was. After expressing our confusion about why our nine year old boys couldn’t keep score, we learned the league doesn’t keep score until the U13 level. This tidbit of information means my son won’t have scored soccer games for another full two years.

You may be reading this thinking, “Sabrina we aren’t trying to raise competitive kids…we want everyone to feel important.” Let me be clear, I do want my kids to feel important, but I also want them to understand the cause and effect of hard work. I want my children to learn how to win with grace, but I also want them to learn how to lose with class. At what point do we start preparing our children for life beyond the safe walls of our home. In our house, I am obviously my kids number one fan and I want to believe they can do anything they set out to accomplish. While I want to encourage my kids to succeed in everything they do, after years of experience I know things don’t always go smoothly in trying to reach your goals. I want to teach my children to celebrate their successes, but I also want to teach them how to react to loss and rejection. While I don’t in anyway wish suffering on my children, I won’t stop them from experiencing loss and rejection as they grow. By allowing my kids to lose on occasion I am allowing them space to learn how to overcome adversity and come back stronger. I certainly don’t want my children to mentally shutdown when they receive their first rejection. Can you imagine a twenty year old man who goes for that job interview feeling entitled to the position because he simply showed up? All those years of participation track and field ribbons have set a standard of entitlement and not of earning the win. Participation ribbons are not reality once we transition from childhood into teenage years and adulthood.

If we consistently teach our children that everybody wins and nobody loses, are we really setting them up for success? I think our job as parents is to provide them with the tools to be kind humans. Can we raise kids who can win gracefully and show compassion and empathy to those who lose? While I don’t think we should turn our 3 year olds into competition junkies, I do think as our children transition from preschool age into elementary age we should begin teaching them how to win and lose fairly. The skills they learn through sport and competition can easily transition into life skills that they can truly benefit from. Is there a way we can find balance between making every child feel important and teaching our kids about competition?

You may be reading this and wondering how exactly you teach your children to gracefully win and lose. I have a few suggestions on simple things we can incorporate into our daily lives to help our children begin developing the skills they need to lose without losing their mind. My first suggestion is to resist the urge to always let your kids win. It is instinctual to want to protect our kids from all obstacles, but when we allow them to lose occasionally we are creating an environment that forces them to learn how to overcome struggles and deal with their frustrations. I would also suggest taking the time to connect with them after a loss, allow them space to experience their emotions and let them know its ok to feel upset and frustrated by a loss. The key is to teach our children that their feelings are important in that moment, but they can sit with their feelings without making others feel small. They can learn how to be upset by a loss without hurting others in the process.

Another important aspect of this life lesson is the cause and effect of hard work. I want my kids to see the value in committing to practice, I want them to view practice time as was way to improve their skills. I think this concept of winning and losing can easily tie into my previous blog on raising grateful children. Don’t forget there are just as many lessons to learn through winning as there are through losing. When you are trying to teach your child to lose gracefully, find ways to regularly incorporate games and competition into your family routine. In order to be the most effective with your lessons, I suggest picking short games that allow quick turnaround time for open discussions about their feelings (I.e. don’t play a three hour game of monopoly and expect great results . Lastly, spend some time educating your kids on good sportsmanship and what that looks like to them. After a win or loss, spend some time exploring your child’s feelings, ask them to talk about how the other team might be feeling. In my experience by engaging your child to talk about the feelings of others you can create a space for them to learn empathy and compassion.

This is not a one and done life lesson, teaching your child good sportsmanship should be an evolving life lesson, one that you adjust and adapt as they grow and mature. Being a parent is never easy and this might just be one of the toughest yet most rewarding lessons we can teach our children. It is through consistent practice, open dialogue and exceptional leadership that our kids can learn to be good winners and gracious losers.