Rejection in sports comes in many forms. Regardless of the reason, watching your child get rejected is hard and can be especially hard when rejected in a sport they love. In this article we will share our thoughts and advice on how to help your son deal with rejection in sports and also how to take constructive criticism.
Tips
The Child Mind Institute lists these 5 tips for helping your son deal with rejection.
- Comfort and Validate Their Experience
- Make Failing Safe
- If You Don’t Succeed, Try Again
- Tie Your Children’s Value to Their Character, Not Their Achievements
- Take a Back Seat
Comfort and Validate Their Experience
As a baseball mom, when our child feels rejected it’s hard not to go into “mama bear” mode. It’s natural for a parent to want to comfort their child. Do your best not to downplay what he may be feeling. Instead try to have them focus on what it is they may still need to work on by asking the coach for feedback. Having the coach’s input will help your son know what skills they may need to work on or develop.
Make Failing Safe
Whether it’s not making a team or not being played regularly, playing sports can come with a lot of rejection. It’s easy to make excuses for why they may be feeling rejected and some of those may be legitimate reasons. However, rejection is a natural part of life that everyone will go through at some point. It’s important they understand it’s okay to fail sometimes.
If You Don’t Succeed, Try Again
As parents, it’s important to encourage children to keep trying. If you son doesn’t make a team or isn’t playing as much as they would like, encourage them to take the feedback from the coach and continue to work. The key is to keep putting in the work and trying. The coach will see that effort and hopefully, it will make a difference.
One thing to help with this is find what they enjoy the most about the sport and have them focus on that in a fun way for a while to help build their confidence. For example, our son loves to get hitting practice, so we try to encourage hitting sessions as often as he wants. Getting a neighborhood wiffle ball game together is another way for him to get some hitting in, but in a fun and de-stressed environment.
Tie Your Children’s Value to Their Character, Not Their Achievements
It’s so difficult for parents and children to compare themselves to their peers and feel as though they have to do better. Healthy competition is a good thing, so long as it doesn’t become harmful to their self-esteem. One thing we stress with our son is to not focus on perfection. Everyone makes mistakes. How you deal with those mistakes or rejection is what also helps to build a strong character.
Our repeated motto with our son is we don’t expect or demand you to be the best at everything you do. The phrase, “Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard” is a great phrase to live by and pass on to your children.
Take a Back Seat
As stated above, rejection is a natural part of life, as hard as it can be at times. It’s also natural for parents to want to step in when they see their child is hurting. Doing that, may cause more harm than good. As noted above on tying value to their character, dealing with rejection also builds character. By encouraging them to work through the rejection, taking the constructive criticism & feedback from the coach and continue trying, they’re also building self-esteem and building life problem solving skills.
A Coach’s Perspective
Joel Hartman from @prospectdugout has great advice for parents and for kids, from a coach’s perspective. He stresses the importance of being honest with his players.
Joel states, “I tell my player’s the truth, and I tell them I do that because I respect them. I’m here to help them improve and if I don’t point out areas they need to improve on, I’m not helping them. I treat them with respect, and they respect me back. Constructive criticism is necessary for improvement. It’s not a knock on the player, but a sign of respect from the coach having the player’s best interests in mind.
Players need to know where they stand. I teach my players to acknowledge their teammates’ differences and support each other because everyone has a role to play. Some more skilled than others, but all are equally important to the team and that’s what I teach them. Rejection has nothing to do with you. You will hear “no” all the time, but you have to stay committed and keep pushing and believing. try to be around people with that similar mindset so you have a support system. Being around people that are negative is not the right environment for improvement.”
Summary
If your son didn’t make a team they tried out for, encourage them to keep trying for other teams. In our article, “Important Tips for Joining a Baseball Team: Things I Wish I Knew Earlier as a Baseball Mom“, there are a lot of team options, if you know where to look. We recommend following some of the baseball social media groups in your area. Coaches will post in those groups when they are looking to add players. They’ll often even state what positions they’re looking for, so you know whether or not it’s worth it to try out for the team.
Often coaches may only need 1 or 2 players and will be looking for someone that can play specific positions. It’s nice to know that ahead of the tryout, if at all possible. Again, the most important take away is for your son to understand rejection is normal and understand the value of hard work and resilience.
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