I spend a lot of time playing games with my 4 year-old. She really likes to win. When it is just her and myself, I give her a little slack and most of the time I let her win. I am realizing that maybe that isn’t the greatest strategy.

Tonight the three girls and I had some family game time. The first game we played was Guess What I Am.

We all love this game. It is fun to stick our faces through the holes and make guesses like, “Am I an animal? Do I have feathers? Am I a girl or boy?”

This game went pretty well. No tears. Little one kind of did her own thing.

Then we played the new Connect 4X4. Nadia did not want to be blocked. She did not want to wait her turn, She wanted to win. Her sisters are not quite so easy on her as I am. They wanted to win, too.

This almost turned into a game of war. This is usually when the tears come. Luckily tonight we all laughed.

I will never forget when we had some friends over for a night of games. Their then 4 year old lost a game and said, “I hate myself”. We laughed back then and couldn’t believe that our kids would ever act like that when they lost. . . Fast forward 5 years and I am the one that isn’t laughing at my 4 year olds behavior.

So how do you do it? How do you get a 4 year old to participate and not always think they have to win?

0 Comments