What If Your Kid Doesn't Make the Team?
Watching your kids face disappointment is hard, but what if these moments are actually tools that build resilience and faith?
During my daughter’s 8th-grade year, she decided she wanted to play a sport. Which, if you know her, was totally unlike her. She, however, insisted. She tried out for the volleyball team with zero prior experience and made the B-Team. She was a contributor, played good minutes, and really began to love the sport. Never in my wildest dreams did I think a B-Team girls volleyball game could get so intense!
Fast forward to her Freshman year after a summer of volleyball practice, every day, all summer, which our high school calls "The Path to Valhalla." The long hot summer rolled into August, and tryouts began. They were brutal. Returning seniors, missing the start of tryouts by mere minutes, were turned away. A-team players from last year didn't make a team.
We made it to the last round of cuts, but I honestly didn’t hold out much hope for Josie. When I finally saw her walking out to the car, I could immediately tell she hadn’t made it. You could see it in her walk, in the way she held her head. The disappointment was dripping off of her like honey from a spoon.
She climbed into the front seat, and I simply said, “Hey.”
She said “Hey” back. And then she was silent for five minutes. Through tears, she uttered, “I didn’t make the team, Dad.”
I am sitting here crying, writing the words. She worked so hard. She put in so many hours, and has scars to prove it! And still she didn’t make the team. This didn’t seem fair. I wanted to call the coach, write an email, do something! I wanted to tell her all the ways the coach had messed up, how they would be sorry for not taking her.
But silence ruled the moment.
Listen or Speak?
James 1:19 says, “Everyone should be quick to hear and slow to speak.” And Proverbs tells us that "The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out."
And so I, with small questions, began to draw from her what had happened at tryouts, but more importantly, why she wanted to play a sport so badly. Why making a team was such a big deal to her.
We also talked about why tomorrow wouldn’t be any different than today even if she had made a team. The reason why? She quoted her favorite 40 I Am [1] to me. I hadn’t even thought about using this tool with her, but it is where her mind went almost immediately. There was no doubt she was sad, but she knew her disappointment didn’t define her.
Problem Solver or Equipper?
Listen, dear friend, our kids don’t need us to solve all their problems. They need us to walk with them while they figure it out on their own. (And occasionally they need us to grab them by the back of the shirt and pull them away from the cliff.)
Conflict is this crucible that shapes character. Difficulty doesn’t define who we are; rather, it is the tool that God uses to shape and mold us. Why would we want to take that away from our kids? Our job isn’t to give them everything or to protect them from everything,
Our job is to equip them with the tools to see conflict for what it is: an opportunity to become more Christ-like. Conflict and difficulty are hard, but when used by the Master and guided by the hand of a parent, they become tools to shape and mold our children into adult Christ followers who have resilience, who can look into the face of a storm and see their Savior in the midst of it.
