Bad Loser? - How to Help Your Child Cope With Losing in Sport - By Zoë Mallett

A more personal understanding of losing in sport

I probably understand this part of sport more than most because I have always been a difficult loser myself. On the outside I am polite and I will always say well played to the other team but internally it can stay with me far longer than people would realise....literally days.  I can't sleep, I replay a match in my mind and beat myself up over decisions I made or didnt make.

Even now while coaching youth basketball I notice that same feeling after a loss. A game will finish and everything will look fine on the surface but my mind will still be going over and over moments from the match long after I have left the court not to mention my negative feelings about the poor referees (who as we all know are just doing their job).

The reason I share this is because it is very easy to assume that children who react strongly to losing are struggling in an unusual way but in reality this emotional response is actually very common in competitive sport. Some young athletes feel it immediately and show it outwardly while others hold it in and process it much more privately.

What matters most is not the reaction itself but how it is understood afterwards.  When a child takes a loss personally it is often because they care deeply about what they are doing which is a good thing. That emotional investment is definitely not a weakness. In many cases it shows pure passion and is the foundation of long term improvement. The challenge is helping them learn how to separate performance from identity so that a difficult game does not become a judgment on who they are as a person or as an athlete but what they do next.

Over time this is where reflection becomes so important. When young athletes are given space to process their thoughts in a structured way they start to see patterns rather than single moments. They begin to understand that emotion after a game is not always a reliable measure of performance and that improvement is built across weeks and months rather than one result.  

So is there a way to deal with losing when you do not take it well?

Yes there is but it rarely comes from trying to simply ignore the feeling or convince yourself that it does not matter. For people who take losing personally the emotional response is often immediate and quite strong and that is not something you can just switch off.

In my experience both as a player and now as a coach the most effective way to deal with this is not to suppress the feeling but to give it somewhere to go afterwards. When everything is still in your head after a game it tends to loop and repeat which is often what keeps the frustration going long after the match has finished.

One of the simplest ways to break that cycle can be reflection through writing. When you write things down after a game it creates distance between what you felt and what actually happened. Instead of the emotion staying tangled in your thoughts it becomes something you can look at more clearly. Even a few minutes of writing can help turn a frustrating experience into something more structured and easier to understand and in my case, allow you to sleep well!  

It can help to write in a very simple way. What happened in the game or competition. How you felt at the time. And what you might do differently next time. This is not about judging performance but about creating clarity.  We have now got in the habit of doing this at home when my kids are angry about a result.  The result is almost instant.  For the times when we arent able to write things down because we are on our way home for example, I encourage them to do a voice note or video on their phone either having a good vent or giving themselves their own advice for the next match.  I leave them to do that in private.

Over time the aim is that the habit changes how they process losing. The emotion is still there because it should be but it does not stay stuck in the same loop. They start to see patterns in their performance rather than only focusing on their individual moments. That shift is important because confidence is not built from never losing but from understanding how to respond when you do.

For young athletes this is where a structured journal can make a real difference. It gives them a consistent place to offload thoughts after training or competition so they are not carrying everything in their head. It also helps them build a habit of looking back with a learning mindset rather than an emotional one which is a key part of developing resilience in sport.

The goal is not to remove the feeling of disappointment because that usually shows how much someone cares. The goal is to stop that feeling from defining the way they see themselves as an young sports person.