Differences between English/Japanese 'to want'

[Bucko]

I wrote a quick report about the Italian movie 'Life is Beautiful' and wanted to say the following:

"The father didn't want his son getting sad so he told him that the place was a big game."

The part I want to focus on is "the father didn't want his son getting sad..." In Japanese, I wrote it the following way: お父さんは息子が悲しくなることを欲しくなかったので「ここは大きなゲームだよ」と言いました 。

My Japanese teacher said it didn't really make sense, but it took her ages to try and figure out a proper way to express it (probably because she didn't want to use grammar that I didn't understand). The best she came up with was:

お父さんは息子が悲しくならないために「ここは大きなゲームだよ」と言いました。

I guess this roughly translates to "in order for the son to not become sad, the father said the place was a big game".

Anyway, I'm just interested to know what other ways there are to say the same sort of phrase? How would you all write that phrase?

I also have to figure out a way to separate 'I want' in English and the 'hoshiis and ~tais' in Japanese as obviously they're not directly interchangable.

[Bueller_007]

I wrote a quick report about the Italian movie 'Life is Beautiful' and wanted to say the following:

"The father didn't want his son getting sad so he told him that the place was a big game."

The part I want to focus on is "the father didn't want his son getting sad..." In Japanese, I wrote it the following way: お父さんは息子が悲しくなることを欲しくなかったので「ここは大きなゲームだよ」と言いました 。

My Japanese teacher said it didn't really make sense, but it took her ages to try and figure out a proper way to express it (probably because she didn't want to use grammar that I didn't understand). The best she came up with was:

お父さんは息子が悲しくならないために「ここは大きなゲームだよ」と言いました。

I guess this roughly translates to "in order for the son to not become sad, the father said the place was a big game".

Anyway, I'm just interested to know what other ways there are to say the same sort of phrase? How would you all write that phrase?

I also have to figure out a way to separate 'I want' in English and the 'hoshiis and ~tais' in Japanese as obviously they're not directly interchangable.

I would have said it the same way as your teacher.

Direct translations are often awkward.

This might work, as well. Or might not. I don't know:
息子が悲しくなるんは嫌なので，父親は「この場所はただのゲームだよ」と言った。