Is Your Child a Sore Loser? What Bluey can teach you about losing & raising a resilient child.

May 25
5 min read

Do you remember the game Pass the Parcel from your childhood?

At birthday parties, all the children would sit in a circle vibrating with excitement while one glorious, suspiciously lumpy parcel was placed in the middle of the room. Wrapped in approximately 47 layers of newspaper and sticky tape, it held the promise of ultimate treasure buried somewhere deep inside.

Then the music would start.

Children passed the parcel around with the intensity of people handling nuclear material. Everyone had a strategy:

Some held onto it just a little too long. Some launched it away like a hot potato. Others locked eyes with the parent controlling the music, silently begging: Please. Please stop it on me. I deserve happiness.

And then - suddenly - the music stopped.

One lucky child became the chosen one. The hero. The envy of the room.

They peeled back a layer…

Now, back in my Australian childhood, Pass the Parcel was absolutely ruthless.

None of this “every layer has a prize” business. Oh no.

You might unwrap a lolly. You might get a tiny bar of soap. Or you might peel back your layer and discover… Absolutely nothing at all.

The emotional devastation was immediate. Here too every child had a strategy:

Some children sulked.

Some burst into tears and dramatically exited the room.

Others tried to recover with dignity while internally spiraling because there were still layers to go and maybe - just maybe - the final grand prize would still be theirs...

Honestly? I never once won the big prize in the middle. And yet… somehow… I survived.

In fact, I’m half convinced my entire resilience to disappointment was forged during those brutal Pass the Parcel years.

But jokes aside…

How does your child handle losing?

The answer to this question matters more than we sometimes realise.

Today, many of us as parents feel enormous pressure to protect our children from discomfort. We hover. We rescue. We soften every fall before it happens.

We praise constantly.“Well done!”“Good job!”“You’re amazing!”

And of course - our hearts are in the right place. We want our children to feel loved and confident.

But somewhere along the way, modern parenting started treating disappointment like an emergency.

Unfortunately there is a problem with this approach:

Children do not become resilient because life always goes their way.

They become resilient because they discover they can survive when it doesn’t.

Research consistently shows that children who develop a growth mindset - the belief that abilities improve through effort, practice, mistakes and persistence - cope better with setbacks and recover more effectively from failure. Studies have even found that children with a growth mindset pay more attention to mistakes and are better able to bounce back after getting things wrong.

In other words:

Failure itself isn’t damaging. What children believe about failure is what matters.

If a child learns:

“Losing means I’m bad at this.”

…they avoid challenge.

But if a child learns:

“This didn’t work yet.”

…they keep trying.

That is resilience.

And resilience is not built during the easy moments.

It’s built:

when they lose the board game,
when they fall off the scooter,
when they don’t get invited,
when they come second,
when they try really hard and still fail.

Those are the moments their inner voice is being shaped.

Our job is not to remove every obstacle.

It’s to help our children realise:

“I can handle hard things.”

That doesn’t mean abandoning them emotionally.

It means staying calm enough to guide instead of rescue.

If we constantly interfere - fixing, negotiating, softening, protecting - children never get the chance to discover their own capability. They will internalise helplessness (a phenomenon called learned helplessness), expect us to solve their problems every single time and they will ultimately move through life without taking agency and full responsibility for themselves.

And yes… this is hard.

Especially when your child is lying on the floor crying because they lost UNO after confidently announcing they were “definitely going to win.” (We’ve all been there.)

But those moments are gold - because this is where emotional strength is built.

Not through lectures, motivational posters, and definitely not through “everyone gets a trophy.”

Through lived experience.

Bluey shows us how it's done

Even Lucky's dad knew this in the iconic Pass the Parcel episode of the Australian cartoon, Bluey, when he said:

“We’re raising a nation of squibs!”

(his response to seeing a toy being packed into every layer of Pass the Parcel...) Hilarious? Yes. Completely wrong? Not at all.

In this episode, Bluey's sister, Bingo, gradually learns to tolerate disappointment through repeated exposure to not winning every single time. She doesn’t magically become resilient because someone tells her to be resilient.

She becomes resilient because she practices it.

And that’s exactly how emotional resilience works in real life too.

So next time…

…you’re playing a board game with your child…

…or racing them to the car…

…or watching them lose at football…

Pause before immediately rescuing the moment.

Don’t always let them win. Don’t instantly distract them from disappointment. Don’t panic over the tears ("oh no, it's ok, here you have it")

Because learning how to lose gracefully is part of learning how to live fully.

Our children need opportunities to discover:

disappointment won’t destroy them,
failure is temporary,
effort matters,
and they are capable of trying again.

That’s the real prize hidden inside the parcel.

How to guide your child through losing without losing your mind:

Validate first, redirect second.

"That's really frustrating" is different to "It's fine, it's just a game."

It IS just a game. But their feelings are real, and they need you to confirm that before they can move through it. Thirty seconds of acknowledgment saves you twenty minutes of escalation.

Don't hand them the win.

When you play games with your child, play to win. Not viciously, but genuinely. Because when they eventually beat you - and they will - it will mean something.

Watch your own reaction to their losses.

When parents react as though failure is devastating, kids' takeaway is that they need to avoid failure instead of learning from it. If you flinch every time they lose, they learn that losing is something to flinch at. Your composure is their permission to be okay.

Ask the right question after.

Not "Why did you lose?" but "What would you do differently next time?" One question closes down. The other opens everything up.

Remember,

Children who never learn how to lose often struggle to learn how to grow. If you’re never failing…you’re probably not stretching yourself enough to discover what you’re actually capable of.

CHECK OUT THE BLUEY EPISODE HERE:

"Pass the Parcel" (Season 3, Episode 14) is one of my favorite Bluey episodes, exploring the clash between modern party games (where every layer has a prize) and "proper" old-school rules - the way I was raised;) (one big prize in the center). It hilariously captures the resulting tantrums and the ultimate lesson of learning how to lose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7sBLY6vXLU

Key Details & Plot

The Conflict: Lucky's Dad (Pat) decides modern games with prizes in every layer are "raising a nation of squibs". He brings back the classic version: multiple layers of wrapping paper, but only one big prize in the center, and the music stops completely when the parcel stops.
Bingo’s Struggle: At several birthday parties, Bingo keeps getting nothing and is devastated. Meanwhile, her friends happily celebrate getting presents in every layer under the old traditional rules.
The Lesson: Eventually, the kids realize that not everyone wins, which teaches them how to deal with disappointment. By the end of the episode, Bingo's best friend Lila learns to handle losing, and Bingo finally gets the big prize.