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1. Dear Care and Feeding,
My 7-year-old son “Mason” plays soccer and really enjoys it and has made some good friends on the team. The issue is that my husband “Nigel” is a borderline soccer hooligan. While at our son’s games, he is perpetually making loud comments and curses when he thinks a call is unfair. He even earned himself a three-game suspension after he stormed down to the field to confront the referee when he called a foul on Mason and had to be pulled away by two other dads and both coaches.
Mason is really upset by his dad’s behavior (as am I and all of the other parents!) and asked if I can get him to stop. I have tried. Nigel is normally a decent and mild-mannered person. But when it comes to our son’s games, it’s like he becomes possessed. He keeps assuring me he will tone it down, but it doesn’t happen, no matter how many times I ask. I am this close to speaking to those in charge about barring my husband from attending the games for the remainder of the season. Can you suggest anything that would allow him to watch our son play without causing a riot?
—Sports Dad Issues
Dear Sports Dad Issues,
Controlling your emotions is a valuable life skill, and your husband is setting an absolutely terrible example for your son. Your husband needs to talk to someone about his anger and lack of self control before it goes too far. Sports aren’t an excuse to act this way—regularly cursing in front of kids in response to a call you disagree with!—and anyone taking 7-year-old soccer games this seriously needs to seek professional help. If the circumstances were different (road rage, Karen-ing out at the grocery store when someone goes to pay with a check), what would happen? He’s on the road to ostracizing you and your family from the rest of the children’s soccer community through his behavior—and potentially creating even worse consequences. You can’t make him go to therapy or take an anger management course, but you can tell him it’s what you think he needs to do.
Try to appeal to Nigel’s sense of empathy. He is embarrassing his son in front of his teammates. If he wants his son to enjoy himself playing soccer, he needs to stop coming to games until he is able to strengthen his emotional skills. It sounds like, given his promises to tone it down, that he is at least a little aware that there’s a real issue here, and also like he’s generally a great person—you can position yourself as being on his team. What you want for him is to be the person you know he can be. And both of you are on your kid’s team. He shouldn’t be the reason that his kid doesn’t want to play sports. Tell him to be a role model, not a cautionary tale.
Don’t go behind your husband’s back to have him barred from attending games. That will backfire when he finds out. Ideally, if he finds it impossible to not show up and yell, he would ask for himself to be “recused,” or admit to you that he’s unable to control himself and have you ask for him to be barred. Keeping himself away from the field before he does something bad enough to get suspended again will be doing you, your son, and everyone favor. If he really needs to watch, you can FaceTime him from the game. Though, mute him and make sure he knows he’s muted. I was going to suggest you have him sit in the car from a spot where he can see, but I wouldn’t trust him not to get out and come raging in after a bad call. Hopefully, any measures you take here are something both of you are on board with—and, as he works on his emotions, temporary.
****
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
My 9-year-old loves playing board games … until she doesn’t. Occasionally she can lose with grace, but more often she gets extremely distressed if she thinks she’s doing worse than the other player, or if she’s in danger of losing. Something close to panic sets in, as if it’s an emergency that she win the game. And she asks to play games; no one is forcing her! I really want to help her— it would be lovely if we could play fun family games that don’t devolve into tears and accusations of unfairness. Sure we could play collaborative board games, but the ability to lose an inconsequential game without fully losing it seems important. She is on the autism spectrum, but otherwise has no tendency towards meltdowns or extreme reactions. It’s just games. Any advice?
—Sore Loser
Dear Sore Loser,
I do get where you daughter is coming from. The trouble with some games is that it’s possible to be losing so badly halfway through that you have no shot whatsoever at winning, and then you have to sit there taking punches and watching someone else gleefully tap their pieces around the board until the bloodbath is over. This is why I don’t play Monopoly and why I promote cheating at Sorry. Modern board games like Catan solve this problem by having multiple avenues to winning and being able to hide some of your progress from opponents. Still, even those games can wind up being a slog.
For this reason, if your daughter wants to play a longer game, I would actually stick to the collaborative ones like Outfoxed, Pandemic or Robinson Crusoe. For what my family calls “winning games,” start with the shortest ones you can think of and train her into losing gracefully. Remember: most people lose. That’s why winning is interesting. Some short games that we’ve had success with include Connect 4, Gin Rummy, and Pass the Pigs.
With any game, long or short, don’t finish the game if she starts getting out of sorts. It’s important for her to understand that the game is supposed to be fun. If she’s not having fun (or, more likely, making the game no fun for everyone else), there’s nothing wrong with stopping. Don’t guilt trip her about it, just let her know that it doesn’t seem like she’s having fun, and it’s time to do something else. She knows what she did and maybe next time, if she wants to finish, she’ll realize that staying calm is the way to do it. It took me until I was an adult to realize that if I didn’t like a book anymore I could just put it down. Ideally, she will learn to just opt out of certain games from the get-go. But life is too short to finish a crappy TV series, or a Monopoly game in which your brother has managed to get three quarters of the board in a series of ill-informed negotiations and shakedowns. She can work on mastering the skill of losing with grace, and the skill of just not engaging in leisure activities that she knows she’s liable to wind up hating.
—Greg
1. Dear Care and Feeding,
My 7-year-old son “Mason” plays soccer and really enjoys it and has made some good friends on the team. The issue is that my husband “Nigel” is a borderline soccer hooligan. While at our son’s games, he is perpetually making loud comments and curses when he thinks a call is unfair. He even earned himself a three-game suspension after he stormed down to the field to confront the referee when he called a foul on Mason and had to be pulled away by two other dads and both coaches.
Mason is really upset by his dad’s behavior (as am I and all of the other parents!) and asked if I can get him to stop. I have tried. Nigel is normally a decent and mild-mannered person. But when it comes to our son’s games, it’s like he becomes possessed. He keeps assuring me he will tone it down, but it doesn’t happen, no matter how many times I ask. I am this close to speaking to those in charge about barring my husband from attending the games for the remainder of the season. Can you suggest anything that would allow him to watch our son play without causing a riot?
—Sports Dad Issues
Dear Sports Dad Issues,
Controlling your emotions is a valuable life skill, and your husband is setting an absolutely terrible example for your son. Your husband needs to talk to someone about his anger and lack of self control before it goes too far. Sports aren’t an excuse to act this way—regularly cursing in front of kids in response to a call you disagree with!—and anyone taking 7-year-old soccer games this seriously needs to seek professional help. If the circumstances were different (road rage, Karen-ing out at the grocery store when someone goes to pay with a check), what would happen? He’s on the road to ostracizing you and your family from the rest of the children’s soccer community through his behavior—and potentially creating even worse consequences. You can’t make him go to therapy or take an anger management course, but you can tell him it’s what you think he needs to do.
Try to appeal to Nigel’s sense of empathy. He is embarrassing his son in front of his teammates. If he wants his son to enjoy himself playing soccer, he needs to stop coming to games until he is able to strengthen his emotional skills. It sounds like, given his promises to tone it down, that he is at least a little aware that there’s a real issue here, and also like he’s generally a great person—you can position yourself as being on his team. What you want for him is to be the person you know he can be. And both of you are on your kid’s team. He shouldn’t be the reason that his kid doesn’t want to play sports. Tell him to be a role model, not a cautionary tale.
Don’t go behind your husband’s back to have him barred from attending games. That will backfire when he finds out. Ideally, if he finds it impossible to not show up and yell, he would ask for himself to be “recused,” or admit to you that he’s unable to control himself and have you ask for him to be barred. Keeping himself away from the field before he does something bad enough to get suspended again will be doing you, your son, and everyone favor. If he really needs to watch, you can FaceTime him from the game. Though, mute him and make sure he knows he’s muted. I was going to suggest you have him sit in the car from a spot where he can see, but I wouldn’t trust him not to get out and come raging in after a bad call. Hopefully, any measures you take here are something both of you are on board with—and, as he works on his emotions, temporary.
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
My 9-year-old loves playing board games … until she doesn’t. Occasionally she can lose with grace, but more often she gets extremely distressed if she thinks she’s doing worse than the other player, or if she’s in danger of losing. Something close to panic sets in, as if it’s an emergency that she win the game. And she asks to play games; no one is forcing her! I really want to help her— it would be lovely if we could play fun family games that don’t devolve into tears and accusations of unfairness. Sure we could play collaborative board games, but the ability to lose an inconsequential game without fully losing it seems important. She is on the autism spectrum, but otherwise has no tendency towards meltdowns or extreme reactions. It’s just games. Any advice?
—Sore Loser
Dear Sore Loser,
I do get where you daughter is coming from. The trouble with some games is that it’s possible to be losing so badly halfway through that you have no shot whatsoever at winning, and then you have to sit there taking punches and watching someone else gleefully tap their pieces around the board until the bloodbath is over. This is why I don’t play Monopoly and why I promote cheating at Sorry. Modern board games like Catan solve this problem by having multiple avenues to winning and being able to hide some of your progress from opponents. Still, even those games can wind up being a slog.
For this reason, if your daughter wants to play a longer game, I would actually stick to the collaborative ones like Outfoxed, Pandemic or Robinson Crusoe. For what my family calls “winning games,” start with the shortest ones you can think of and train her into losing gracefully. Remember: most people lose. That’s why winning is interesting. Some short games that we’ve had success with include Connect 4, Gin Rummy, and Pass the Pigs.
With any game, long or short, don’t finish the game if she starts getting out of sorts. It’s important for her to understand that the game is supposed to be fun. If she’s not having fun (or, more likely, making the game no fun for everyone else), there’s nothing wrong with stopping. Don’t guilt trip her about it, just let her know that it doesn’t seem like she’s having fun, and it’s time to do something else. She knows what she did and maybe next time, if she wants to finish, she’ll realize that staying calm is the way to do it. It took me until I was an adult to realize that if I didn’t like a book anymore I could just put it down. Ideally, she will learn to just opt out of certain games from the get-go. But life is too short to finish a crappy TV series, or a Monopoly game in which your brother has managed to get three quarters of the board in a series of ill-informed negotiations and shakedowns. She can work on mastering the skill of losing with grace, and the skill of just not engaging in leisure activities that she knows she’s liable to wind up hating.
—Greg
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- In my household, quitting was bad. ("Try again! Don't give up!")
- My slot in the family was the over-achiever, so losing hurt my sense of identity.
Neither of these were things I understood at nine, though. I just knew I had to keep doing it until I got it right. If you asked me directly, I would have lied through my teeth and said I was having fun because I didn't really feel like I had any other choice.
What helped was watching my adult friends model different behaviors. If someone isn't having fun, we can declare the game over and move on. We can talk about not having fun with games as a personal preference and not a moral failing (ie, "I don't like games" rather than "I'm a sore loser"). Games could be interrupted in the middle for conversation, which showed they were less important than being together. I could just give up, and that was okay.
I'm probably sympathizing too hard with the kid in this letter, but the idea that someone would look at their panicking kid and think "they just need to experience this more" drives me crazy.
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I do think it's important to tell kids directly that sometimes it's okay to skip out on optional things that make them unhappy. Not everything, sure, but kids pick up on social norms and expectations, and don't necessarily have the context to realize that those expectations aren't rules set in stone.
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My family also had an autistic kid who begged for games but couldn't deal with losing. But actually "losing" isn't just one thing. It might be other people gloating, it might be feeling that you fell short of expectations, it might be the game dragging on too long, it might be frustration at your lack of skill (either you know you made a tactical mistake, or you can't see a way to do better). Board game scoring can give you feedback in a way that can be hard to deal with, not immediate but while you are still emotionally invested.
Also the sore loser thing is really hard to navigate. You're supposed to be competitive and take the game seriously and care about winning, but you're also supposed to be emotionally neutral about whether you actually win or not. So it's not even the expectation of winning or not winning, it's the meta-expectation about how you're supposed to feel.