How can I show my brother that he did something wrong, without seeming angry, so that he doesn't feel afraid to make a mistake

Question

Brief summary about myself. I work in IT and often enough people ask me to help them with their IT related issues, most often it's someone from the family or relatives. In my every day work I do a lot of tech related things, which means some things to me seem super obvious or super easy to do, when for some people they're not. consciously of course I know that, but I assume that the problem that I have is influenced by my subconscious. There are times that I'm easily "triggered" by people not being able to understand what I'm telling them or how to do certain IT related things. I'm trying to work on my behaviour and I think it's much better than before, since I'm catching myself a lot of times not saying something, when I would have before and things like that.

This case is a bit different. I have a little brother that's 5 years old, he comes sometimes on the weekend and I really enjoy spending time with him, since he's a little fun kid and he really loves playing computer games, he doesn't have a computer himself, so being able to play at my home is like a birthday to him. Recently a couple of times I've noticed that I'm getting angry at him for things he does not understand. I'm not talkin about any kind of physical threats or whatever, just that my attitude kinda changes for some reason, last couple of times I managed to not get angry, but I still feel that something is not right and I'm afraid, even though he's a kid, he feels it too.

He plays racing games on my computer or some other games for kid and usually he fails, since he's absolutely new to the computer and is a little kid and when I explain to him what to do, show him what to do multiple times, even though I do not get angry I'm still somehow not okay, I start to be distant or cold or whatever the word is to describe that behaviour. Afterwards it's still okay, we have fun etc. when he's not playing and it's like it never happened, because he also forgets stuff, since he's a kid, but when he leaves, I feel kinda gulity and I don't want to put him in a position that he's in the environment where he can't make a mistake, because that's definitely not going to help him. I know that the problem is only in me, him being a kid has nothing to do with my issues.

My question is, how do I show him that it's okay to make mistakes without looking angry/frustrated or expressing anger or frustration at him?

P.S. If you can recommend any books on a similar subject or issues that would be even more great, thanks.

Answer 1

The most important thing that will help you keep a possitive attitude is to realise the level of skill that is expected of him and what exactly you can currently teach him.

A 5 year old kid that only plays on a computer on a weekend every once in a while is probably not going to learn how to play racing games properly. Which is perfectly fine!

Instead of getting frustrated at him for releasing the accelerate button on a straight part, or constantly oversteering which causes him to finish dead last each time. Think about what little steps of improvement he's making in the "getting used to doing something on a PC" skill.

Once you figure out what he is capable of, try to encourage him each time to just take a tiny step further. Here's some steps I can think of for a racing game on what to focus on:

• learn what the buttons do: how to accelerate, how to steer left and right
• try to finish a race
• finish a race without getting stuck at one of the walls, or driving way off the track
• finish a race before the slowest PC player
• use a powerup correctly (thinking of mario cart for example where he should throw a red shell when there's an oponent in front of him)
• use a powerup without releasing the accelerate button
• ...

I do want to point out here that figuring out what skill a kid is capable of is really hard to do if you only see them once in a while. A little trick I use myself is to check what exactly they're enthousiastic about and just go along with that.

For example, my nephew (also around 5 years old) was playing around with a mario kart game on his handheld console. He was sitting next to me and telling me things like "oh look, I got this powerup now" then released the accelerate to have his thumb free to press that powerup button. So my reasoning was, ok great he just learned what those powerups are and what to do with them. I'm not going to teach him he shouldn't let go of the other button at this stage. Instead let him get used to the "using powerups" step first.

Doing so keeps your own frustration in check and makes it natural to just keep their enthusiasm up. Like you said, just being there with you and being able to toy around on a computer are what's important to him. Learning to drive properly and being able to win races isn't something you expect of someone that is barely able to write his own name right?