“Gordon — what do I say to my child when they’ve had a bad game or competition?”
“What do you mean, be honest with them? Would your own parents have been honest with you?”
“Yes, they would.”
“So why are we ripping up everything previous generations of parents did, trying to overprotect this generation from perfectly normal experiences? Maybe sometimes we need to be honest, and have the harder conversations with them.”
That’s part of a real conversation from a recent parent workshop, and it’s stuck with me since. It got me genuinely thinking about the challenges we face as parents today, and whether, on occasion, we’re actually helping ourselves or our children at all.
It also left me wanting to challenge this generation of parents to stand together, do better, and lead because in places, we seem to be tearing up the parenting rulebook that came before us. Some of that’s been for the better, certainly not all of it.
We don’t have a crystal ball, but the question’s worth asking honestly: is our approach to sports parenting a quick fix, or are we simply storing up problems for our children further down the line?
Sport remains one of the safest ways to build a wide range of character and life skills that carry a young person into whatever they choose to do next. But it only works if we value the journey itself, and embrace the reality of it, learning included.
We need to use the situations sport throws up to build those skills deliberately, and talk about them openly and often, so our children see that we value them just as much as any result. Determination, commitment, resilience, creativity, adaptability, self-organisation, good communication — all of it can be built through the sporting experience, if we let it.
A bad game, a difficult competition, some form of setback, an injury, say will be a normal part of that experience. Hopefully not too often, but it will happen, and how we handle it matters. Not by being dishonest, not by rushing to smooth things over, and not by falling into what’s sometimes called the “criticism sandwich.”
For anyone who hasn’t come across the term: it’s feedback dressed up with something positive before and after, with the actual criticism buried in the middle.
We do this to make feedback feel more palatable, but children aren’t fooled for long. They quickly learn that any praise is likely to be followed by a large “but” and research backs this up too: it’s a genuinely weak way to give feedback, since children often walk away remembering only the praise, or sensing that the criticism was the real point all along.
Positive, genuinely useful feedback needs honesty, empathy, purpose, and understanding in equal measure.
Can we go too far the other way, though, and be unrealistically positive? Plenty of parents we’ve spoken to describe other parents heaping on lavish praise, whether it’s earned or not. Coaches tell us it’s a real challenge working with children whose own sense of what they’re achieving has drifted a long way from reality. We also know that realistic self-evaluation is one of the key psychological traits behind genuine excellence and an honest, realistic approach from us is exactly what helps build it.
Toxic positivity is the belief that we should only focus on positive emotion, and suppress or avoid anything negative. The idea that no matter how hard the situation, we should always try to appear happy, grateful, optimistic.
Psychologist Susan David describes it as a form of denial: rejecting or dismissing an uncomfortable emotion in favour of a falsely positive version of reality. It stops the person actually feeling the disappointment from being taken seriously, or from making genuine sense of what happened, which is exactly what they need to move forward.
When things go wrong for our children in sport, it’s remarkably easy to fall into this trap without even noticing. Lines like “you’ll be alright,” “it’s not that important,” or “it could be worse” are all versions of it. So is jumping straight to blame or excuses on their behalf — especially if that becomes the only kind of conversation we ever have with them when things don’t go to plan.
So, back to where this started — what can we actually do when our child has had a bad game or competition?
Be ready to listen, and ask open questions that let your child talk through what happened, how they saw it, and how it felt, so they can start making sense of it themselves. You’ll have your own thoughts and opinions, but the ability to sit with your child, keep it about them rather than you, and try genuinely to see it from their side, is remarkably powerful.
There’s a place for sharing your own experiences too, but only once they’ve had the chance to get everything out, and only if they actually want to hear it, rather than having it handed to them unasked.
Reflecting back and summarising what your child has told you is a genuinely useful skill in itself, it shows you’ve understood them accurately, and helps them clarify their own thinking about what just happened.
Helping your child find their own insight and meaning in a setback is never wasted effort. It builds a genuine toolbox of strategies they can draw on next time something similar happens, and that builds real resilience, far more than any well-meant toxic positivity ever could.
On a personal note, I’ve worked hard at this myself, and still slipped up as recently as last week jumping straight to how I saw things, and what needed fixing, exactly the opposite of everything above. It made me feel better in the moment. I’m honestly not sure it helped my children at all.
I never said it would be easy but there’s plenty here worth sitting with and reflecting on.
