“Oh come on!” I yelled with genuine frustration in my voice as my mini-golf ball rolled millimeters past the hole. And yet I was smiling only a few moments later. That would have never happened even a few years ago. I credit my kids for this life lesson.

I’ve never been a particularly good loser. I hate wasting time and losing feels a whole lot like wasting time to me. In board games like Settlers of Caatan or Monopoly where you realize early on if you are going to lose badly and then just have to wait for it to happen, I get antsy and anxious. When playing word and puzzle games, I feel like I’m “supposed” to be good at them and then just feel dumb when I lose. It’s just generally unpleasant for everyone involved.

But I started to get a different perspective on losing while watching my kids play video games.

I’ve never been a big gamer save building and rebuilding the same city in SimCity. Sidescrollers seemed particularly frustrating, with the need to do the same moves over and over again until you’re able to get by the trickiest parts.

But my older kid is a huge fan of the Mario Bros. games, which are some of the most iconic side scrolling games of all time. Much of the time while he’s playing them, it doesn’t sound like he’s having fun. When I look at him, he’s hyper-focused on the screen, not smiling. When he makes noise, it’s usually groans or cries of frustration. And yet, it’s clear he loves these games.

Over time, I realized two things observing him play. One is that video games give him a sense of control and an ability to let off steam over frustrations in life that there aren’t a lot of other outlets for. As comedian Adam Conover observes, “Video games provide a clear goal that can be accomplished – not something that happens often in life for folks with ADHD.” As I too often feel a lack of control, I understand the need but not the outlet. But the second reason I could very much relate to. The harder the level is, the more satisfying it is for him to meet the goal. Even if he does it over and over again, none of it is wasted. It’s all a learning experience. Similarly, I don’t just tolerate doing hard things – I embrace them. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward. When I saw myself in his experience, I was better able to learn from and translate his attitude back to me. While he’s still not a good loser, he enjoys the activity overall despite losing over and over. Maybe I could too.

Which brings me back to mini-golf. Playing with my kids, I realized that it was much more important to enjoy the game than keep score. By taking away the shame of a terrible score, getting two or three over par became more funny than frustrating. It made it into a challenge to be conquered by trying again and again rather than an intense competition. Taking away the aspect of “winning” and “losing” made it so much more fun for all of us.

The other part of changing that dynamic for me was learning to express my frustration without taking it out on anyone. You’d think this is a skill learned as a parent, but so often it’s not. Some parents take it out on their kids. Obviously, that’s not good. Some – like me – just shove it down and never fully deal with it. While it’s better than taking it out on kids, that’s not good either. It ends up wearing you down or building up and coming out unexpectedly. Watching my kids get angry at the video game rather than any particular person helped me consider what that looks like for me. And in mini-golf, it involves yelling at the stupid ball for not going in the stupid hole, for God’s sake! (Or something like that.)

While we as parents and caregivers want to model the right values and behavior for our kids, there is so much we can learn from them as well. Sometimes, it’s something both as big and as small as learning to play mini-golf badly with grace.