Dealing with losing

Your kid was sparring and they did not win. Maybe it was a small match inside the school. Maybe it was a tournament. Sometimes after that they suddenly want to pause, or they suddenly find something else they are interested in. Nobody likes losing. That is understandable.

The first step has to happen before they ever set foot in there. Look, you are going to win or you are going to learn. Get them ready for either. They go in, they perform, there is a result, and then you sit down and tear it apart. What went right, what went wrong. New tactics, new strategy, then go do it again. Make sure there is footage. If they have that mindset before it happens, a loss is not a shock.

Parents have to be careful too. You are sitting there watching. Let’s say it is a really bad loss, the kind where they want to crawl under a rock. If your face shows shame or disappointment, it moves from a simple loss at a game to I let the people I love most down. That is rough, especially on a little person.

You also cannot treat their performance as a reflection on you. I see it with little kids just learning to roll. The kid is being a three-and-a-half-year-old, and the parent looks embarrassed, like this means I am a bad parent. Forgive the whole process. They are doing their best with the head they have today.

How you deal with their failure is how they will deal with their own. A kid who can say, I failed, I accept it, that is not a reflection on me as a human being, the way I deal with it is, that kid has compassion for themselves. Some kids hate losing much more than they like winning. Those kids often grow up to be high performers. Help them deal with it with grace. That does more than any kick I could teach. Sometimes we are raising ourselves to be warriors too.

Watch the full conversation: https://youtu.be/iv6mpDdVZms