Here is a small experiment you can run at home tonight. Take a game your child already loves. Play one round the usual way, where somebody wins and somebody does not. Then play it again with a single change: everyone is on the same team, and the game itself is the opponent. Now watch what happens in the minutes after each round.
Researchers ran a much tidier version of this in 2025. In two kindergartens, 120 children played the same game for fifteen minutes. Half were randomly assigned to play it competitively, half cooperatively. Afterwards, the children who had played as a team were more willing to share stickers with other kids [1]. Fifteen minutes. Same game, same room, same rules. The only real change was the frame: play to beat each other, or play to win together.
That result did not come out of nowhere. An earlier study with 96 four and five year olds found that children shared less with kids outside the game after playing competitively than after playing cooperatively, with solo play landing in between [2]. And a classic 1994 study of 70 preschoolers found the effect spills past the game itself: after cooperative games, children cooperated more and squabbled less during ordinary free play, while competitive games were followed by the opposite pattern [3].
What this does and does not mean
A little care before the tips. These studies worked with four and five year olds, the younger edge of the ages we care about, and the effects were measured minutes after play. Nobody should promise you that one board game evening rewires a child. Cooperative play also has limits: in the sharing study, children became more generous afterwards, yet it did not change whom they invited into their next game [2].
Competition is not the villain here either. Losing a race to a sibling, wobbling, and coming back for one more round is practice a child needs. The useful takeaway is smaller: the frame around a game quietly teaches something of its own, and you are allowed to choose the frame.
Try this at home (for parents)
You rarely need to buy anything new. Most games you already own can flip. A memory game turns cooperative when you count how many pairs the whole family found before the timer ran out. A jigsaw puzzle is already a team sport the moment you sit on the floor and claim the sky pieces. Even tidying the living room becomes a cooperative game when the clock is the opponent.
Two small moves help. First, say the team out loud. "Can we beat the game?" is a different invitation from "want to play against me?" Second, treat waiting for a turn as its own achievement. Sitting still while a little brother thinks is hard work at five. Name it when you see it: "You waited the whole turn. That was the hard part, and you did it."
For the kids (read this bit together)
Want to try something? Pick your favorite game. Tonight, you and your grownup are one team, and the game is the sneaky opponent. Can you beat it together? High five if you do. If you almost do, that counts as an adventure too. Try again tomorrow.
Where Wonderix stands
When we built Wonderix, we gave our little monsters one firm rule: they never sit on the other side of the table. They guess alongside your child, get things almost right, and ask for help with the tricky part. When a puzzle finally cracks, they do not announce a winner. They say "we did it." After the studies above, we think that little word, we, is doing more work than it looks.
So tonight, same game, one change. See what the quarter hour afterwards looks like.
References
- Zhang, Q., Ruan, J., & Xiong, D. (2025). Differential effects of exposure to cooperative versus competitive games on sharing behavior in young children. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1545932. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1545932
- Toppe, T., Hardecker, S., & Haun, D. B. M. (2019). Playing a cooperative game promotes preschoolers' sharing with third-parties, but not social inclusion. PLoS ONE, 14(8), e0221092. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221092
- Bay-Hinitz, A. K., Peterson, R. F., & Quilitch, H. R. (1994). Cooperative games: a way to modify aggressive and cooperative behaviors in young children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(3), 435-446. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1994.27-435