Being a loser doesn’t mean you’re worthless, it means you are able to handle taking a loss and keep going. That’s what I’m trying to teach my kids.
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In recent months my son has become obsessed with WWE and all things wrestling. For Christmas Santa brought him an Xbox One (a present I was incredibly reluctant to approve) and WWE 2K15.
My reservations for him becoming a huge WWE fan were extinguished when we took him to his first live WWE event in Louisville, KY back last summer. I remember watching the wrestlers of the mid-90s and early 2000s and for a time I enjoyed watching Monday Night RAW and Thursday Night SmackDown. I also remember only really being interested in wrestling because I had a few friends who were really into it and I felt left out at the lunch table. So I watched it to be able to contribute to the conversation and feed my own insecurities.
What brought me all in on my son loving WWE was the excitement he displayed during the live events. He was so pumped to see his favorites superstars live and in person, John Cena being the primary recipient of my son’s attention. I had never seen him so happy about anything other than Ninja Turtles, it was a nice change of pace.
The other bonus is that compared to many forms of entertainment these days, WWE is rather clean television. And, it’s littered with stars who do great things to give back to their communities. John Cena, for instance, recently granted his 500th wish for the Make-A-Wish foundation. Not to mention, it’s much less annoying that watching syndicated episodes of Spongebob over and over again.
The major problem we’ve encountered in my house has to do with competitiveness and losing. I’m a natural competitor. I love competing, and beating, other people in basically anything. Cards, golf, video games, snowball fights, running, drawing, board games, or whatever is at hand. That doesn’t mean I always win, far from it, but that’s always my goal. Over the years, I learned what it meant to be a good sport and to lose with grace. It’s hard to do sometimes, but ultimately one has to learn to win and lose the right way. If not, you end up destroying relationships instead of fostering them.
I’ve yet to really teach my son how to be a loser. It’s frustrating because for a time when they are really little, you just let them win everything. They magically beat you at Monopoly after you buy and build hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. They win a game of UNO when you lay down your last card to go out.
As he gets older it becomes more clear to me that he has to take some losses in order to learn what it means to be a good loser. Unfortunately, I’m the one who must hand him these losses.
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My wife is still at the point where she lets him win everything. And I understand. He get’s mad when he loses and things become not so fun really quick. But that’s the point. If we don’t teach him to be a good loser, then he will never be a gracious winner. I love his competitive drive, I think it’s a character trait one must have in order to be resilient and successful to some degree. But nobody can be amazing at everything, and a little humble pie is needed from time to time.
At this point, he still throws fits when I beat him at WWE 2K15 or when I don’t let him pin me when we wrestle in person. He’s getting better about not throwing fits when he doesn’t win board games, but there’s work to be done.
Here are five steps I think can help you teach your kids how to be a loser.
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Don’t Let Them Win Everything
There has to come a point where they don’t win everything out of sympathy. I remember my dad beating me in pool every time we played until I was about 14. I worked and worked to get to a point where I could run the table in a game of 9-ball because if I gave him an opening he’d beat me. It was the same thing in Ping Pong. They day I beat him in pool for the first time is one of the fondest memories I have as a kid. It reinforced that if I worked hard and focused on improving a certain skill set, I could be a winner. If he continued to let me win, I would have developed this false sense of achievement and when I got beat by someone else it would have delivered a much more significant blow to my self-esteem.
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Teach Them The Reason They Have To Learn To Lose
It’s not enough to just beat them. They have to understand why they can’t win everything from jump street. I’m still a young parent, my son just turned seven, but I’ve learned that the why of something is equally important to children as is the how or the do. This lesson will be hard to learn, and therefore, hard to teach. But we are not doing our children a service by developing a false sense of accomplishment constantly.
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Learning To Lose Is A Way To Develop Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is an attribute that goes a long way. Understanding where one fits into this world is critical to one finding their purpose. I want my son to be successful, but more than success I want him to find where he fits and can thrive the most for the skillset he’s been given. Sports and competitiveness is a great way to develop that sense of self-awareness because it brings reality into the fantastical world of winning and losing. It provides avenues of where and how to improve and puts value on the idea of practicing.
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I don’t like losing, but I like my child being a sore loser even less. I want him to be a good sport and to have manners. I want him to congratulate someone who bests him in something and then I want him to take what he learned and use it to improve. It’s a life skill I think we as parents should instill in our children, and it’s proved to be harder for me to do that than I anticipated.
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Photo credit: Helga Weber