Helping them lose helps them to eventually win
9-year-old Liam was furious. Despite his best attempts at the kicking the soccer ball into the makeshift goal his family had set up in the park, he just couldn’t quite get it in. Worse still, his younger brother was nailing it every single time.
Despite doing quite well in the other sports he had tried so far, Liam was literally and figuratively having difficulty in kicking goals that sunny May afternoon. And he was annoyed – really annoyed. He tried to blame something else, including what his brother had ‘done’ to the ball, the bumps in the ground, the elastic in his pants that was ‘tight’, and that it was too windy.
His parents were doing their very best to re-build his seemingly shattered self-esteem. While quietly telling his brother how well he was doing, they were much more focussed on Liam. They offered suggestions of how he could do it differently, but their every utterance was met with fury. To take a different tac, they started to think up bits of praise they could lob his way, talking about how well he ran up to the ball, and — really clutching at straws now — how good he is at athletics and how well he can fly a kite.
In the car, they were trying to think of good ways to make up for the humiliation he had suffered, offering to buy his favourite takeaway meal for dinner that night and reminding him of the good things in his life. But they didn’t succeed. He announced later that night that he wasn’t going to start soccer that week because it was a ‘stupid game’.
These days, we are a society possessed by the act of promoting self-esteem in children. Many parents and teachers do all that they can to make sure children experience success every day. This is often through increased parent effort to make the situation easily winnable for the child, such as doing most of the work on their science project, only insisting they play sports they are immediately good at and allowing them to avoid activities in which they don’t show instant skill.
Some parents even make what is a loss sound like a win with excuses all of the unfair things not going in the child’s favour or how they should have done much better in the competition but for the biased judges or referees. Or blaming the coach who didn’t see true talent.
And while these efforts are very admirable, they only truly prepare children for a life of future success and winning. Losing? That’s not a situation for which the child is so prepared.
Unless children have been blessed by the genetic lotto, it is likely their life is going to involve some wins, some losses, and some last places. And if a child is not truly prepared for that reality, then they’re going to be excessively disappointed, embarrassed or angry when things don’t pan out in the way they expect them to. Sometimes even excessive praise for minor wins can blow children’s expectations of future success out of proportion.
If children aren’t comfortable with the small defeats when learning a new skill, then they won’t persist at trying to master it. Who knows, Liam may have actually got better if he had coped with momentary frustration and focussed his thoughts on listening to his parents’ suggestions for improvement, rather than coming up with new reasons why he was a victim of circumstances. Who knows what enjoyment he could have gained out of playing the game and meeting a whole new crowd of teammates, if he had only persisted?
Takeaway for parents
Help them have the right approach to trying anything new.
· Normalise the process of not getting it the first time. Remind them that they are learning, and they haven’t worked it out… yet.
· When they’ve had a bad day on the field, don’t pump them with nonsense praise. Calmly agree that it wasn’t their best day but remind them that it happens to everyone.
· Google and show them some famous sports people who have had bad moments but kept going.
· Be matter of fact if either sibling is currently better at some things. This will help them accept that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.
