Play to win or let the children win?
If you are a father or mother, you will want to know what is better when you play with your children: beat them or let them win?
We live in a competitive society and it seems that the only thing that matters is winning to excel. In reality, children must be taught to play for fun, with a teamwork mentality and if they do not win, they will have to accept that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. The important thing is to learn to tolerate frustration and above all, learn from mistakes to improve the strategies in the game for the future.
Respect for oneself and for others is essential to achieve this. Children are usually happy when they win and when they lose, or get angry or blame others for losing. There are even parents who change the rules of the games so that their children never lose, but this is a mistake since in life you do not always win and children must learn this from an early age.
Competition is good but so is level play. But parents when they play with their children wonder: is it better to teach children to play to win or let them win? How will they become more competitive if other people beat them in the game?
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THE DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THINKING
Parenting experts seem to have three different approaches to the question of whether we should let a child win by lies at a game:
Yes, let win to build a better confidence in itself
-No, keep a level playing field because letting the child win will not allow him to tolerate frustration and he will always want to win against others, something that is not always possible.
-The ideal is to find a balance between the occasional victory and the lessons learned by winning and losing.
If you allow your child to always win, he will have a lot of pressure in the world on his self-esteem since you will be creating feelings of inadequacy in the environment . Those who defend the position of allowing children to win think that they will feel better about themselves and it will strengthen their self-esteem. But it really only gives them a false sense of security and breeds feelings of entitlement later when they can discover how unfit they are at some things (no one is good at everything). If they always win games when they play with their parents, they won’t be motivated to do better and won’t sharpen persistence skills at the next competitive game.
Those who think that it is better not to let them win unless they really do, seem to prepare them for the harsh reality of life in this way . But this way they will not be prepared either because they will be disappointed when they fail or they will think they lose because it is not a fair competition. If they feel weak or inadequate, failing in the competition will motivate them to become stronger, more skilled, and more resilient.
But there is a part that escapes here. If a child repeatedly loses in a competition with a parent or older sibling, he or she may simply give up or move on to something else where they have a greater chance of success . The child who loses 10 times out of 10 in a game may feel somewhat motivated to improve, but when he continues to lose … he will stop trying.
The most successful approach, without a doubt, is the third: you have to find a balance between victory and defeat, only in this way will children have the opportunity to savor satisfaction and learn to tolerate frustration in respect of others. Balancing the competitive experience so that children learn to lose but can also experience the thrill of winning will make a child enjoy both experiences. Feeling both experiences will give you hope that sometimes he can win too and will keep trying, staying motivated to improve in the future. In this way you will learn that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, you will learn to tolerate frustration and to respect your opponents in a level game.
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.