When Your Kid Falls Apart on the Field: A Mental Skills Moment
That 200-foot distance between you and your child's breakdown is actually the most important space in youth baseball. It's where the real mental training happens—or doesn't.
Your instinct is to fix it. To yell encouragement. To sprint over. To somehow absorb the disappointment for them. But here's what's actually occurring: your kid is experiencing failure in real time, with an audience, and learning whether they can recover or collapse under pressure.
This is the unglamorous part of mental toughness nobody talks about. Not the highlight-reel comeback. The moment before it—when your child has to decide if one bad play means they're bad, or if it means they're about to learn something.
The hardest part for parents isn't staying in your seat. It's resisting the urge to reframe it for them afterward. "You'll get the next one" or "That wasn't your fault" can actually short-circuit their ability to build genuine resilience. Instead: ask what they noticed. Let them sit with the discomfort. Watch them discover they can survive it.
That's not parenting. That's coaching their mind.
Read the full story → https://wheretohit.com/dugout/kid-cries-on-field
Originally published at Mind & Muscle
Train your mind. Dominate your game.
