There's Crying in Baseball

One year ago, we were in Myrtle Beach for a baseball tournament. We played some very talented teams from Florida and South Carolina. Maybe the best team we played was from Massachusetts--they had a kid who could throw a curveball that our team couldn't hit. It was hot, very hot, around 90 degrees each day. It was also the end of the season. My kid, a small for his age 11-year-old, was already tired with it being the end of the season. He still loved playing games, but you could tell he was tired and that his body needed rest. The heat and the pressure of playing better teams was a lot to endure. First game, he struggled at the plate, and couldn't get a hit. At the end of the game, he was exhausted, and he cried. A lot. He'd cry over the years at age 8, 9, 10, and 11 when playing baseball. So would other kids. You'd see kids cry after striking out or making an error or getting thrown out. What the secret is to handling your kid crying, I'm not sure. I nor any other parent that I've noticed seem to have the secret sauce. Your kid is upset, they perceive themselves as failing, they might cry. We'd try to explain to kids that it's hard to succeed in baseball. We can say things like "If you get a hit 2 or 3 times out of 10 in baseball, that's success" or "MLB players strike out and make errors!" but it doesn't make kids feel better. They want to succeed and it's hugely frustrating for them to strike out or to "fail" in other ways. 

I think that was the last time my kid cried at baseball. I've observed a big difference between 11 and 12 years old. I haven't observed much crying from kids this year. Sure, you still see it once in a while for the same reasons--striking out, getting thrown out, booting a ball, getting hit by a pitch--but it's much less common and doesn't last as long. Kids are more able to move on more quickly. I notice I can reason with my 12-year-old in a way that I couldn't in previous years. It makes sense to him now that he can't hold onto a "bad" at bat and that he has to have a short memory when something doesn't go his way. You can't carry over a "bad" at bat to the field, and you can't get stuck on what went "wrong" in the last at bat. You try to learn from an unsuccessful at bat, but you don't obsess about it. I try to teach him to stay in the moment and be confident in the here and now. 

It's never easy to see your kid upset and parents seem flustered when their kid is crying. I can't claim to have always known what to do in such moments. We can aim to be compassionate, understanding,  supportive, and patient.