The usual reason for poor sportsmanship is that children equate losing with being a loser. This can be as much of a problem on the baseball diamond where the issue is skill as when playing a board game where a spin of the dial determines the winner. Try to explain that sometimes luck rather than skill is the operative factor, though tweens are so superstitious they may be despondent because they believe they are “jinxed.”

Playing for Fun

Help your child understand the difference between playing to win and playing to have fun by asking him if he's having fun when you are playing a game with him. When you're losing, make a point of mentioning that you're still having fun playing. Add that if you do lose, you'll remember how much fun you're having right now so you won't feel too badly. Deliver the usual reminders that, depending on the game, winning is a matter of luck, or of a mixture of luck and skill, or of mostly skill. Help your child understand that the way to improve in a skill is to practice it.

Model good sportsmanship when you play a competitive game with your child by shaking his hand and congratulating him when he wins. Have him congratulate you when you win. Express pride in your son for being a good sport, adding that his ability to handle defeat gracefully shows that he's growing up — that is especially meaningful to tween boys. When you're on a winning streak, state that you like it best when sometimes you win and sometimes he does because not knowing who is going to win makes games more exciting. Otherwise, it's like playing tag with a two-year-old; there's no victory in winning. It's the uncertainty of not knowing who will win that makes things interesting.

Building Frustration Tolerance

To improve at a sport, your tween must be able to tolerate frustration. Children who throw their tennis rackets when they miss a lob and argue every point may appear to be battling their opponents, but such behavior usually signals they are actually engaged in a heated competition with themselves and have failed to measure up to their own expectations. Tweens with poor persistence have difficulty tolerating frustration, too. Sometimes they don't appear to be upset. They simply lose interest in tasks they find difficult because they don't consider them worth the effort. Sometimes they do feel upset but feign a lack of interest because they feel too defeated to continue. To improve at a game, sport, or anything else, children must be able to persist.

To build persistence, help your child experience the “practice makes perfect” rule by acknowledging your child's efforts and small successes whenever she is making progress with a task she finds challenging.

To help your child develop better frustration tolerance, explain that when people try to do something they find really hard, their stomach sometimes feels tense or nervous. When that happens, they need a break before they get overwhelmed. Point out times she is managing to cope with frustration by saying, “That kind of situation would drive me crazy, but you're keeping your cool. How are you doing that?”

It doesn't matter that your child can't answer. You want her to give your question some thought and recognize whatever calming techniques she employed so she can summon them as needed in the future. Some children tear up their drawings because of a single wrong mark and destroy their homework papers because of a lone error or erasure. Developing good frustration tolerance yields academic as well as social benefits. Popular tweens share the characteristic of having better-than-average social skills. Hence, there are several compelling reasons to help your child develop good tolerance for frustration.