Playing to Win
by Holly Winter
On Thanksgiving day, my 5 year-old great nephew H and I played a chase game around the dining room of the firehouse where my family celebrates. We ran around tables, with H always a few steps from me. He laughed so hard as he squirmed out of my reach.
I was finally able to catch him; I picked him up and spun him around. "I'm the winner!" I joked.
He broke into tears of frustration and struggled to get away. My sister motioned for me to let him go. Later she told me that my brother's grandchild can't handle frustration, which I found frustrating.
A child will have trouble learning to read or write if he buckles when things don't go his way. I am a kindergarten teacher so I know a lot about 5 year old boys. Being able to take a risk is essential to learning, and you also need to have a high frustration tolerance, meaning that you can continue learning even when things aren't going your way.
H is a student in a Kindergarten class in a school in the same district where I teach. It's such a shame that he doesn't live in the area where I teach. I would love to help push his learning so he could gain even more skills.
He came to my house to play one snowy day when school was closed. He picked up two giant chips from my giant Connect 4 game and asked, "Can we play this?"
"Yes."
"Can we play it right now?" he asked.
"Let's do it." I smiled.
We'd spent the afternoon together, grateful that the roads were passable by lunch time. I took him to a friend's restaurant and then to an art center where he worked on projects for a few hours. He asked if we could go to my house to play some more.
I won 8 games of Connect 4 in a row before he broke into tears. This time there was nobody around to interfere with his moodiness around losing.
"I want to win." he stood with his fists clenched and tears falling fast.
"You want to win?" I asked, ignoring the tears.
He sobbed, "Yes, I want to win. You always win. I want to win."
"I'm very good at this game." I said. "I've been practicing for a lot of years, and I like to win."
He buried his head into the living room chair and shouted to me. "Now it's my turn to win."
"Nope." I said without pity. "I will never, ever let you win. I like to win."
He has many (2nd) cousins who are in their twenties. They love to spend time with him and I'm guessing that do whatever they can to keep that smile on his face, like let him win or backdown when he gets upset.
He cried louder.
I suggested that maybe we should do something else if playing this game was going to make him sad.
"No" he sobbed. "I want to play." He demanded to go first, and I let him. He dropped the chip into the outer row and I put my chip into a center row.
"Why do you put it there?" he asked, wiping away tears.
"Do you really want to know why?"
He nodded his head.
I showed him all of the ways I could win the game from the center and how few ways I could win the game from the edge.
He watched as I motioned over the rows then said, "I thought I could win at the edge because it was the first circle."
I nodded and told him I liked his strategy, but if it wasn't working he might want to try another strategy.
From then on he watched every chip I dropped and tried to guess my reasoning behind each move. I couldn't have been more excited, that he was making himself focus even when he was upset.
"Hey." I said to him. "Stop focusing on the game. Shouldn't you start crying again?"
He laughed and focused harder.
"No more focusing." I joked, which made him study the board even more.
When he lost the next game he didn't cry, he studied my diagonal win, then told me that he was going first again.
"Nope." I said. "It's my turn to go first."
He went to cry when I grabbed a center slot, but his mood changed back to curiosity and he dropped a chip next to mine. For every chip I dropped, he dropped a chip next to mine. I loved the way he had changed his strategy, even if it didn't work.
During the next game he worked to build his own row of chips, rather than only focusing on my builds. After a few more games, it happened. He won a game.
He flopped on the floor and giggled uncontrollably. "I won." he laughed. "I really beat you."
"You did." I smiled.
"And you didn't let me win." he said.
"I will never let you win, I like winning too much to give it away."
When he was done laughing, he reset the board and asked me if I wanted to go first.
"Yes." I said, dropping the chip into the center column.
After another batch of games, he won again and couldn't stop laughing.
I smiled. "How does it feel to win?"
"Really good." he said, nodding his head up and down.
"How does it feel to play the game even if you don't win?"
He thought about it for a moment, then said, "It feels fun to play but it feels better to win."
As he set up the board for another game, I relaxed. Today he learned to push through his frustration and his brain might remember that a good way to move through frustration is to focus. It's a first step.
I tried so hard to get his parents to enroll him into my classroom, knowing that I could give him the skills he needed and help him excel. But they liked their neighborhood school.
I sighed. I couldn't have him in my classroom every day, but maybe I could help shape him into a learner by spending time with him on snow days.
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