On my current paeds placement one of my roles is to run 2 groups throughout the week, one an OT/PT combined pre-primary group and another a year 1 PT group. The combined PP group usually consists of the PT doing the warm up, OT following with one of their activities, a PT obstacle course or rotating through various stations, another OT activity and then a PT game at the end like a race of some sort or dodgeball etc before a cool down.
Now with our final activity there can only be one winner in dodgeball but to cater for this so the children don’t feel as if there losers if they don’t win we usually play a few games and make sure each child wins. However, there is one child in the group who can not tolerate losing well at all. In fact whenever he loses in this dodgeball game he runs to his mum and starts crying and screaming and refuses to take part in the rest of the group.
So my supervisor and I have tried a few things to try and get around this which include always letting him win the first game of dodge so hopefully if he wins that one he wont care if he doesn’t win the latter ones. This didn’t work either, even though he had previously won a game it didn’t matter he still went off to his mum in his customary manner when he lost the second game.
We have tried playing games where there is no winner but all the other children in the group absolutely love these games at the end of the group. They all whinge and scream if we don’t play dodge, in fact one day they actually started a little chant to try and get us to play. So we spoke about this and agreed it is unfair to deprive the rest of the class of something they love that makes them feel good (as most of these kids never win anything anywhere else).
So on Friday my supervisor and I agreed to have a bit of a think about it over the weekend about another strategy we could try implement for this weeks group to try and get around this sulky child. So my idea is that im going to try and sit him down at the start of the class and try explaining to him that it isn’t possible for one person to win everything and that children need to share with each other and if you do happen to lose then sulking is no way to go about. I will then try and get his mother to reinforce this at home. Does anyone have any other ideas
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I agree you should speak to the child if the mother is happy for you to do so. Maybe she should be there also whilst you are talking to him to hopefully reinforce your message. The best thing you can do if the situation does not improve is leave it up to the child's mother to deal with him. It is at the end of the class anyway when dodgeball commences, so she can take him home if he gets upset, can't she? The majority of the children are well behaved, and I dont think they should be disadvantaged from fun for the sake of one child's issues.
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