Unfortunately losing is a part of life and your child will lose more matches than they would like. A loss can lead to deflating confidence and determination and can discourage your child from wanting to play more. How you handle this as a parent can have a large impact on how quickly your kid will bounce back. Now each child is a little different and has their own needs, however, if you teach your child how to stay in the right mindset, they will be able to bounce back faster AND can turn a loss into encouragement and harder play.
The most important part of learning how to handle losing matches is developing the right mindset. All too often kids get caught up on losses by just thinking “I can’t believe I lost” over and over again. They never get past it, and so they are never able to learn from it. For your child to gain something from their loss, they have to be able to think constructively about what happened. What did they do during a match that was working and why did they or didn’t they do more of it? What didn’t work well during the match and what did they do to try to adjust for that? If they can think about a match in this way, they can come out of the loss with things to work on and new strategies to try the next time around giving them the opportunity to grow and get better.
It can be tough to get your child to think in a constructive way. However, you can help shape the way your child thinks by asking the right questions at the end of a match.
Before you talk to your child about a match, it is important that they are ready to talk about it. Losing is almost never a fun experience, and it can take a little while for kids to calm down after a match. The cool down period after a loss will be different for every kid. Some children could be ready to talk about it right after the match, some might need a few hours to cool down, and some might need to sleep the loss off. Whatever the case may be, give them their space and try to talk about the loss within 24 hours while the match is still fresh in their head.
Once your child has cooled off enough to speak about the match, it is important that you ask the right questions and give them the proper feedback. DON’T ask about anything that happened in specific points. Chances are they won’t remember, and it will only make them not want to talk to you about the rest of the match. Most kids don’t respond well to you giving them your take on the match. It is much more important that they can formulate their own opinion and figure out what they did right or wrong by themselves. Ask them what they thought they were doing well first, then ask them what wasn’t working, and lastly ask them if they had any strategy. It is important that you do not comment on their answers and to only push them to answer if they say I don’t know. You want your child to come up with this on their own. If they do, then they will be much more likely to take it to heart and want to improve.
By teaching your child to think constructively and asking them the right questions after a match, they will learn a mindset that will allow them to be productive and to come out of a loss with more determination. By being constructive, your child will be able to set new goals for themselves and have more motivation to accomplish them. They will know that if they accomplish these goals, they will be able to improve and beat the person they lost to the next time around.
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