This is an important lesson to teach your children and it’s not an easy one. To teach a child to applaud the winner and accept his or her loss, you are teaching them a form of empathy. It feels good to win and isn’t it nice to be congratulated for your efforts? Remind your child that the next time he or she wins, he or she will receive the same praise and that you should treat others the way you would expect to be treated in return. Life is full of tough, competitive situations and if you teach your children to stand tough when the odds are against them, you will be giving them a great gift that will help them throughout their lives—from childhood to adulthood. While nobody likes a sore loser, the worst kind of game player is a bad winner. The person who wins the game should sit back and smile on the inside. To applaud yourself in front of everyone else and sing your own praises is bad sportsmanship. It’s best to be humble about it—you know you won and everyone else knows you won, and therein lies the glory. I’ve played many a game with a bad winner. They are the ones who can only feel good about their accomplishment if they make everyone else feel lousy about their shortcomings. Those are the kind of people you might not want to play with again. It makes the game much more fun and certainly creates an atmosphere of fair and fun gaming if winners are humble and losers don’t let their egos get in the way of an otherwise good game.
