My kids have come home crying lately. It’s been a tough couple of weeks in our house in terms of losses — all minor, but losses all the same.
One lost a track race in grand fashion, sprinting ahead for most of the course, only to have her breakfast unexpectedly resurface on the final turn. Another child lost a student council race after facing his public speaking fears — and some technical difficulties — during his “what I’d do for the school” speech. Yet another tried out for his school basketball team and didn’t make the cut.
But I couldn’t be prouder of them.
It’s not easy to sit back and watch your children lose. I’ve wanted to match their tears and fist-pounding with my own. After each loss they all came home feeling disgraced, humiliated and even angry. Deflated. “How could that have happened? I prepared, I worked, I tried my best; doesn’t that always equal success?”
Unfortunately, no.
Understanding loss never seems logical, but winning somehow is always more easily explainable. As a therapist, I’ve seen it time and again: The lessons our kids acquire in losses far outweigh what they learn from winning, even when it’s painful. Or maybe because of it.
Our scars always teach us more than our trophies.
When the cultural awakening of mental health became a predominant thought in child-raising culture in America, there grew out of it an awareness of discomfort — emotional, physical, relational — and we were more able to aptly name and acknowledge it. Most of this was incredibly healthy progress. However, when we became adept at describing the downsides of negative emotions, for some it began a quest to eliminate these negative emotions altogether.
Who wouldn’t want to aim for happiness, comfort, elation and joy? Many parents, teachers and caregivers have embarked on a mission to minimize the discomfort of the children they so dearly love by scratching out the loss column altogether.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Competitive games in PE turned into scarf-juggling. a B-plus on a report card has been inflated into an A-minus, and the participation ribbon has been declared the highest objective. “Everyone’s a winner” has been turned into a parenting mantra.
But there can be downsides to this benevolent aim, the largest being that real life is riddled with losing. A parent’s job is to prepare children to enter the world independently. Creating a false reality of ease does them no favors when they quickly realize the real world doesn’t offer participation ribbons.
The reality of the workforce, academics, relationships and politics can hold huge challenges and painful losses. A host of discomforts of which we’re not in control. Adults are bombarded every day with messaging and interactions that lead to sadness and disappointment. So how are we preparing our children for these inevitable disappointments of losing?
Creating an internal narrative of “who I am is more than how I perform” is key. If our kids’ identities are defined by whether they win or lose, a dangerous core of instability will result in a deflated ego or an inflated one, either of which is a recipe for volatility in relationships and emotions. There is always a healthy mourning period, a time of grief when you lose something big or small. If there is no emotion after losing, it likely means there was no perceived attachment or risk in the venture.
It’s OK to feel sad, angry and frustrated when you lose. It means you had skin in the game.
If one never loses, then one can never practice the skill of perseverance. Perseverance is not an emotion, so it won’t come and go on a whim. Rather, it is like a kite that can be flown only in the winds of adversity. Let Ava get upset when she loses the kids get upset when they lose, and then redirect them to keep moving forward. Figure out what happened, and then get to work: “Did you eat too much before the race, and that’s why you got queasy?” ... “Do you need to work more on your ball-handling?” ... ”Maybe there’s a different way to serve the school other than the student council?”
It’s natural to question the fairness of the process and want to insult the winners. Psychological researchers tell us that human nature dictates that we’re all in an existential game of self-preservation. People want to feel justified, sometimes at the expense of the truth and others’ dignity. Parents can help their kids lose with dignity by putting up guardrails when they lose: no pouting for days, admit your loss with no excuses, no insulting opponents, no blaming, and no claiming it wasn’t a fair fight if it clearly was.
Winning isn’t everything. Truth and human dignity trump success every time; from coffee-table Uno games to presidential elections. You’re not defined by your win column.
Striving and competing are scary things. It takes boldness and confidence to throw your hat in the ring. Parents, when was the last time you took a risk and failed in grand fashion in front of your peers? Adults can encourage good and healthy risk-taking by taking it themselves. No caring adult wants kids to lose and experience all the emotions that go with it. Our job as parents, teachers and caregivers is to help our youth see that they can do hard things, take healthy risks and live to tell the story after they lose big.
Encourage kids to try difficult things — and when … not if … they fail? We can harken back not to the dusty box of trophies at mom’s house but to our own wounds, scars and searing losses that hopefully have taught us how to get back out there, bruised but moving forward.
Beth Collums is an Atlanta-based writer. With a professional background in child and family therapy, she often writes about mental health, relationships and education.
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