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Win or Lose
Playing With Grace
By Barbara Unell and Jerry L. Wyckoff
Loss is a natural part of life, but children who are taught that loss is terrible and traumatic, rather than normal and natural, are ill prepared to cope with it. Conventional wisdom says that being a loser is bad and parents must protect their children from losing at all costs.
To help your child become a "good loser," think of it as a process that begins when you model a positive attitude about experiences in life, regardless of what those experiences are. All events are neutral, and it's how you view them that gives them meaning. In essence, helping your child become a good loser means helping him to approach life from an optimistic point-of-view: What can be learned from loss, and how can that learning benefit him?
Help Your Child Develop Resilience.
Children learn resilience – the ability to cope with what life brings – when they live in a safe, nurturing environment in which parents and other caregivers model resilience, acknowledge individual difference, treat them with empathy and compassion and set fair and reasonable rules. As we show in our book, Discipline Without Shouting or Spanking (Meadowbrook, 2002), discipline teaches children how to behave appropriately rather than simply punishing away inappropriate behavior. Teach the Meaning of "No!"
When your child continues to beg for something when you've already said "no," giving in will only teach her that "no" really means "yes" when pressure is applied. In Getting Your Child From No! to Yes! (Meadowbrook, 2004), we show parents how to withstand the pressure their children can exert and move them from negative to positive outcomes. Praise Effort Rather Than Outcome.
