I Want My Son to Lose

I made this statement not too long ago in a group of parents to a resounding jaw-dropped response. For a few seconds, I had to sound like a horrible father to say that I didn’t want my son to win every game he played in. The conversation that followed cleared the air, but there was still disagreement amongst us. “Why would you want to see your son lose? Doesn’t it hurt you to see him disappointed after a loss?” The short answer to this is yes, it does hurt me. I’ve fought back tears when he’s skated off the ice and buried his head in me sobbing. It’s the difficult part of parenting, but if your child is involved in sports, it will happen eventually.

The games will stop, the adversity won’t.

Most kids tend to think that they will play whatever sport it is they are involved in for the rest of their life. For instance, my son is currently trying to decide how he will balance playing both hockey and baseball in college. I firmly believe that at the ripe young age of eleven, the last thing he wants to hear is his dad busting that bubble. While my son is a talented hockey player, and is functional in baseball, I know that one day the time is going to come where he won’t make a roster, and there won’t be a roster to be made.

There’s a lot of emotions that go along with end of a playing career. I imagine its much like retiring from a job. At some point, the games will stop, and life will start. Any amount of time spent as an adult, or just outside of the comforts of living at home, being in school, etc, will tell you that not everything is going to go your way. If you’ve got a .500 record in life, you’re doing pretty good for yourself. My job isn’t to raise a superior athlete that will be a superstar in every sport and win every game. My job is to raise a productive member of society.

Odds are that someday my son is going to grow up and be a husband, father, and employee. My job is to prepare him, even if he is still young, to be the best he can be in those roles when I’m not there to be looking over his shoulder. The things we are teaching today may not be the lessons they learn now, but they can be the seeds planted to learn later. One day he’s going to face adversity and there’s going to be other people depending on him. He’s going to face adversity, and it’s the response that will determine his success. I don’t want him to go out and get embarrasses in every game, and I certainly cheer him on to win, but I know that life isn’t win after win. There’s going to be a loss in there, there’s going to be adversity.

This isn’t punishment

The hardest thing I’ve had to explain to my son is how he can play the game of his life and still lose. Our kids are taught that if they do everything right and work hard that success will follow. I’ve found kids looking at losing as some form of punishment for something that they didn’t do. The truth is, and this is especially true later in life, sometimes there are people that just a little bit better, worked a little harder, or had just a little more luck.

Hockey is a wonderful teacher for this, as it requires a player to start by learning a new skill (skating) and working as a team. My son is a goalie, which is a skillset all to itself. There have been games where his team has been evenly matched with another team, and something that was completely out of everyone’s control happens, and a goal gets in. Whether it’s a deflection off of a stick, a bouncing puck, or being screened by teammate, something is sure to happen that’s out of a team’s control. So, what do you tell a kid that has experienced this? The best lesson could quite possibly be that sometimes there are things just out of our control. Wow, that sounds a lot like life. Why not use these moments to teach the importance of just worrying about what you can control? It would be easy to place blame on another player, a coach, or the referees. That doesn’t bring about growth. We should take into account what is controllable and build off of that, not be hard on a kid for their team losing because of something that no one on the team could help.

What is it that I’m getting at here?

I’ve been the parent that has taken games too serious. I’ve been the dad that was way too hard on his son for a performance. I admit to my mistakes, and I have learned from them. At the end of the day, we shouldn’t worry about the player that we’ve made, and focus on the person that we are building. I could not care less whether my son wins or loses a game. In all honesty, I just want him to have fun. If I’m going to spend this much money on something, it better be enjoyable. My biggest fear is that I will do something, or not do something, that will result in my son not being successful in life. I want to prepare him to give his best effort, and strive to be good at whatever he chooses to do. Yes, losing sucks. It never gets easier. Everything in life is a learning opportunity. Our kids deserve to be equipped with the skills to overcome anything. It’s the mental toughness that comes from dealing with adversity that I want to instill in my child. I don’t want to shield him from those emotions, they may be what drives him to do great things. At the root of all this, I love and care about my son, and I want him to lose in order to win in the bigger games and battles in life.

Related posts:

That incident is still imprinted in my mind like it just happened today. That night has become every night for me since then. My friends don’t believe at the time that what I have seen in him. For…

Have you Subscribed? A little podcast that started in October 2017 has amounted to a larger voice in the podcasting world.This podcast is about LA business owners @Inezlaval and @kekedennie view on…

What a random day about today. i thought i got rid of his already but in the fact i haven’t. so sad and really heart-breaking but it is what it is now. i couldn’t change about anything because i…