The tryout results email lands or the phone rings and your kid didn’t make the team, what do you do? As a parent, you want to remedy this now, to make the suffering go away, or argue that the coaches made a mistake. 

This is an extremely rough time for you and your child, but it’s also one of the greatest parenting chances you will ever have. How you deal with this setback will affect how your child handles obstacles and disappointments for years to come. Rejection hurts, but the skills learned in dealing through it can be invaluable.

Let Them Feel Their Emotions

You might think to downplay the disappointment, or go straight to remedies. But fight that urge because your youngster needs room to be unhappy, irritated or furious that he or she didn’t make the team. These sentiments are genuine and need to be acknowledged. You may want to sit with them in the discomfort. Do not rush to find the silver lining or the lesson. Let them have the rebuff first. Give them that time to be okay with no pressure and start working on a plan forward.

Control Your Parental Responses

Don’t criticize the coaches or say the decision was unfair, even if you think it was. It teaches your child to externalize failure and see themselves as victims rather than as people who can develop. It also eats away at their respect for coaching judgments and authority in general. Also don't compare your kid to others who made the team, or point out what they need to fix right away. 

They already feel inadequate enough so analysis and improvement planning may wait. Also don't write off soccer altogether by saying "it's just a game" or "maybe you should try a different sport." If soccer is important to your child, then to minimize it is negating their feelings and interests.

Talk When They Are Ready

Once the immediate disappointment wears off, ask them if they want to hear why they didn’t make the team. Some coaches offer comments, some do not . If you receive feedback, enable your child to hear it without becoming defensive. The information may sting, but it’s valuable for improvement. Be honest about where your kid is at, versus what the team needs. Can they find places they struggled in tryouts? What do they think was the difference between them and the players that did make the team? This contemplation allows kids to take ownership of their development and not view the decision as arbitrary or unfair.

Make a Plan Together

Once your child has processed the disappointment and knows the gaps, collaborate on a strategy for improvement. What specific abilities are lacking? Is it fast? Ball handling? Tactical awareness? Physically fit? Break down the improvement areas into goals. Maybe they need to practice dribbling 20 minutes a day. 

Perhaps they should practice with their weaker foot, or build up their stamina by running. Find ways to keep growing, even if it’s not on that specific team. Some students need to take a season to work on individual skills before trying out again. The important thing is to retain them in soccer if they still love it and not walk away from the sport completely because of one setback.”

Build Resilience and Perspective

This is your chance to teach one of life’s most essential lessons. Setbacks are fleeting and it’s more about how you react than the setback itself. Share stories of those who have succeeded after early rejections. Many pro athletes were cut from teams early on in their careers. The difference is, they saw rejection as a motivator, not as a final verdict on their talents.

Help your youngster understand that this one team, this one time, does not determine their soccer future or their worth as a person. It’s input on where they are today vs what that particular team needs. It can be closed by work and time. Some kids use rejection as fuel that motivates them to improve themselves drastically. Mental fortitude, built by overcoming disappointment, often matters more than sheer talent for long-term success.

Know the Bigger Picture

Your kid likely won't recall the precise team they didn't make years from now. But they’ll remember how you helped them deal with that disappointment. They will take lessons about resilience, effort and rebounding back from setbacks into every obstacle they face. The abilities learned in coping with this rejection matter so much more than whether you made one particular soccer squad.

Your duty is to help them work through the disappointment in a healthy way, to learn from the experience, and to make a decision about how they want to proceed. No matter if it’s redoubling their efforts to join the squad next year, or learning that their passion resides somewhere else, you’re teaching kids that their setbacks don’t define them.