Stop Fixing Everything: What Kids Learn When You Let the Hard Moments Happen

what to say when they lose the game, snack, or the favorite cup/ how small everyday upsets build resilience/ your calm response is doing more than you think/ you don’t have to do it perfectly

Losing a race taught me a lot about raising a resilient kid.

The other night, my son lost a race he was favored to win. He’s a 2-time All-American in the 5k and a State Champion in the 2-mile. This was one of the final races of his high school career, and people were watching. He was up against a younger, less experienced runner who pushed hard. And in the last stretch, my son lost by a tenth of a second. Everyone was shocked. The crowd around the finish line hushed. I held my breath a little.

What happened next is the part I’ll remember: He walked right over and genuinely congratulated the other kid. It wasn’t performative. You could see it in his face and in the way his body relaxed into the moment. He was impressed by this younger, less experienced runner who outkicked him at the line.

Later, in a quiet moment, when other kids might’ve fallen apart:

Me: “You okay? That was wild.”
Nate, shrugging his tan, muscular shoulders: “What an experience. He out-strategized me. I wasn’t expecting that. Good for him.”

He didn’t sulk or beat himself up. There was no spiraling. Reflecting, he talked about what he learned racing this kid, and how he’d run a different strategy next time. Then he smiled and moved on.

Next year, he’ll run D1 in the Big Ten at Purdue University. Watching him that night, I realized: he’s ready. Not just physically. Emotionally. That loss showed me just how ready he is.

The emotional regulation he showed in that moment didn’t show up overnight.

I shared this anecdote in my IG stories recently, and so many parents reached out to me with some version of the following messages:
“How did you raise him like that?”
“At six, my kid is a sore loser. This is goals for high school.”
“My child would have absolutely lost it. How can I help them?”

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about his childhood and how his time playing, tinkering, and being mostly unstructured played into who he is today. And here’s what I think.

He built that resilience little by little, in the messier, earlier years. AND some of it is just his temperament and personality.

There were times we let him lose without fixing it. Of course, we comforted him. But we didn’t rush to make it better. We tried to be just as present in his losses as we were in his wins. Disappointment was part of the experience, not a red flag that something had gone wrong.

And just so we're clear, I didn’t figure this out overnight. I’m a former teacher, and I’ve spent years learning how to support kids through their emotional development. Even now, as a parent of three, I still mess it up sometimes (often). So if this doesn’t come naturally to you, you can learn it.

Here’s what this looked like in real life: