SCHOOLS are resorting to banning games such as tiggy and skipping because many children either can't share or can't handle losing.

Smaller families and over-protective parents are being blamed for a lack of resilience.

The onus often falls on teachers to show children how to sort out their problems.

Greensborough Primary principal Margaret Hirth, whose school temporarily banned tiggy late last term because of a lack of fair play and a failure to sort out differences of opinion, said children often required adult support for games to run smoothly.

The tiggy ban was lifted this term after the rules were reiterated at assembly.

"Kids would be playing nicely until they got tagged and then they'd say: 'Well, I'm not playing any more','' Mrs Hirth said.

"Instead of it being their fun time, it ended up being that we were sorting out lots and lots of conflict. When I was a child, I had no memory of other people sorting out our tiggy - we just seemed to be able to do it ourselves," she said.

Parent information sessions and a psychologist-run resilience program are among measures to help students weather life's ups and downs.

"All kids at the moment need a little bit of extra support to be resilient and to manage it when things in a game don't go well or when life doesn't go well,'' Mrs Hirth said.

Victorian Principals Association president Gabrielle Leigh said some schools had imposed bans on other games, such as skipping and swapping collector cards, over problems sharing.

Parentingideas founder Michael Grose, who works with 1500 schools nationwide, said smaller families meant many children didn't experience the rigours of interacting with siblings.

Adult-organised activities and children's problems being solved by over-protective parents were also factors.

"We smooth the way for children so by the time they get to school and … they have things that don't go their way, they have difficulty coping,'' he said.

wes.hosking@news.com.au