Candyland Meltdown, Yikes!

Take the game away & put it away for a few day's then retry if behavior continues keep doing it but make it longer each time

This is a maturity issue. I suggest you all start showing how to be gracious losers. Lose on purpose and express excitement about how it was fun to play, but not everyone can always win.

Use the words to show that you are excited for the other person. The adults need to show that even when we do our best, we do not always win, but it is going to be ok. Or taking chances is ok, but we are prepared to not always win.

Use the words to show it was fun during the game no matter who wins or loses.

"That was a fun game." "These die are not helping me move any spaces."
"Gosh I really wanted to land on the red space, oh well maybe next round."

When you all watch ANY competition, do not make a big deal out of if your team won or lost, but how well they tried. How well they must have practiced. How much fun it looks like they are having. How they will win sometimes and sometimes not win, but "oh well at least they are having fun."

Also losing is not personal. NO ONE is perfect because we are human and we are supposed to make mistakes and it would not be fun to always be the winner. When you love people you want them to win too. It is not all about ourselves.

OH, this is one EVERY one goes through. All you can do is explain that it is about having fun, not who wins. If you are playing too, several times through out the game mention how much fun you are having and that you don't care if you win. In the end if you are not the winner make sure you congratulate the winner and say that you had fun and you are not upset that you didn't win. We have to set good examples.
Some kids are just naturally competitve and get VERY upset if they don't win. Tell the child you do not like to see tantrums.
If this child is little, 3, 4, 5, I would take this approach. If the child is older, they should be able to handle not winning. If they have a melt down then maybe they should be told that melt downs for not winning will result in them not playing the next game.

With no more info to go on than that I will assume the child is 4 or 5? Patience, and a few reminders before and during the game...sitting down and explaining it wouldn't be fair if one person won every time, that it might get boring. I would also calmly tell the child if they couldn't play nice it will be a while before we play ( x, y or z) again. Gloating over winning isn't much better, so make sure that isn't an issue as well. Kids mature at different rates, my youngest is a little delayed, he is 3 and we are still really working on the concept of turn taking. I think it is something that will take time to learn, talk about consequences before the game is started. It is ok to be a little bummed from time to time, but work on teaching him or her to be happy for the person who wins...good sportsmanship. I would be very calm and say if they are going to pout or tantrum if they don't win then the game gets a time-out. Lots of luck, it sin't going to happen over night. My middle child had a hard time with this, but through a lot of role playing and playing games we got through it = )

Hmmm...We made sure that when the boys were very young that we didn't make sure they won. Many parents kinda "reverse cheat" because they want to see the joy on their child's face when the child wins. Totally understandable. But when they are young and you set this "I always win" expectation, it can be hard to break.

Now my boys are fairly mature game players and sometimes have to walk away from playing games with others that can't seem to enjoy the game unless they win.

We have now moved onto the challenge of our older son; who is naturally "good" at games and sports, and is starting to finally hit a skill barrier. He gets frustrated that he now has to practice, fail, and try again when before things just came naturally to him. Similar scenario to board game melt down. When he throws down the golf club or the game controller, he has to go to his room, cool off, read and book...Until he is ready to apologize, ask for help (he hates asking for help), and try again.

Ohhh, I have been there and sometime still am! My son just gets so uptight and so dissapointed when he doesn't win.

We have tried a couple of approaches that seem to be working, slowly.

Before the game starts, I set the focus, "Now, we are doing this to have fun. It doesn't matter who wins and who loses...playing the game with each other is the fun part. Ready to have fun?!"

During the game, I show by example. I praise good moves (even if they are chance) and I make encouragin and constructive comments when things don't go well (for him and for me).

If he is starting to get anxious or upset...we take a time out and I remind him of the focus again...Sometimes kids don't know how to let go of some of that anxiety, and we need to teach them how to do it constructively.

For games he gets incredibly worked up over, and the prior methods don't work, we warn him that we will stop the game. If he continues with the poor behavior, we stop the game...

Sometime we won't play that particular game for a few sessions and remind him it is due to how he behaved. We get back to it though and try again after a few sessions, to give him a chance to practive good sportsmanship.

Oh, at the end of the game, we make a big show of congradulating the winner and shaking hands with everyone and telling them it was a good game and what we liked most about it.

We make sure we play a mix of games including a number of cooperative games made by Family Pastimes. They have great games that take require everyone to work together to solve the "problem"...tons of different themes available. During the sore loser years (4-6) we played a lot of those types. Then we could mix in competitive games when the mood was right.

we just keep playing until everyone "wins" lol.