I beat her seven times in a row. Then she started to get depressed and called herself a loser and then she started cheating so I stopped playing. Should I have let her win to make her more confident? Or is it better to teach her to be resilient. She’s eight by the way and I’m thirty five.
NTA. Never let kids win. But DO teach them HOW to win.
Bro 😭 I can’t
She’s 8. Yes, YTA if you can’t figure out how to make a few terrible moves in at least 1 game out of 7.
Don’t LET her win, but teach her the strategy and potentially make a couple mistakes/openings to see if she is learning. Playing games is supposed to be fun. If you’re having fun beating an eight year old seven times, that says more about you than it does about her. Slight YTA.
Agreed.
Was the point of playing for everyone to have fun, or for you to have a true match. Because for the 7 year old, I think the purpose was the former. Also if you’re trying to bond, this ain’t it
I say yeah. It’s ok to still beat her, but give her chances to learn. Kinda like how lions play fight in the wild. It’s play but also learning
INFO: Did you explain how you were beating her, so she could improve?
Teach her how to win. Start with tic tac toe as an example.
YTA. Not because you kept winning, but because you didn’t show her how to think ahead and improve her critical thinking skills.
You have to encourage kids by showing them how to get better and then reasonably be praising them for any small improvement.
Dont have to let her win every time but YTA for beating her ALL the time
YTA – Not for winning that many times, you don’t have to LET her win, but for not making it a learning process. You could have shown why you were winning, explained the mistakes she was making, anything like that. It’s not like a BIG asshole move but it’s a little dickish behavior to win against a kid that many times in a row. She resorted to cheating because she didn’t know HOW to play better, coulda been a teaching opportunity
NTA. Don’t LET her win, but teach her what you are doing. I’m 51F and my great-niece is 9. We played about 30 games on her last visit. While I won the majority of the games, I didn’t win all of them. And I taught her some strategy as we played. Every game that she won, she earned.
“She’s 8 BTW I’m 35” took me out
YTA but for a different reason.
I actually think it’s healthy to lose to children. Some people have opinions about losing on purpose, but I work a lot with kids who struggle to lose, and if you as an adult can model losing gracefully it really helps avoid negative self talk as well.
You don’t need to let the kid win… however, you’re the adult so you can do a few things BEFORE wrecking the child’s self esteem:
Firstly, if you want to give no help you definitely should at least be noticing the child’s emotions. She felt frustrated LONG before the negative self talk started. You could say “This is a pretty tough game, how are you feeling?” “Man, losing 3 times in a row is hard. Do you want to keep playing, or take a break?”
Secondly, there’s a realm of different support you can provide to make the game more fun for the child WITHOUT playing badly on purpose. IMO the worst kind of game is a game where an adult plays badly on purpose to appease a child. Here are some things you can do to support without dumbing down the game:
1) Telegraph your moves and explain your thinking. “I’m gonna put this piece here because I think it’ll block you horizontally” or “I thought about going here, but then I spotted you setting up a diagonal!”
2) Narrate her moves as she plays (“Hmm, another one in a row there!”)
3) Explain mistakes before they happen or encourage her to think twice with a question (“I notice you’re thinking about that spot – look again, do you see why I’d be happy if you put your token there?”)
4) Explain mistakes after they happen (“You dropped that piece there, now do you see how I have 3 in a row diagonally there?”)
My rule of thumb is to let them win 30% of the time if they don’t seem capable of doing it on their own. It still lets them know they have a lot to improve on, but it also doesn’t discourage them from ever playing again.