Want Your Child to Succeed? Value the Small Wins Over Winning.

In our efforts to support our children, sometimes we inadvertently become the barrier to their potential.

The usual question after a child's match is often, "Did you win?" This societal focus on signaling success overshadows the steps required for sustainable long-term success. "Winning" here refers to outcome-based results like match scores, starts, goals, and playing time. As parents, we often assume that "winning" is the key driver for propelling our children toward their goals.?

However, this notion is misleading. If we perceive development merely as a means to an end, our children internalize this perspective. Instead of relishing the game as before, they start prioritizing preserving their current status over pursuing their potential.

Your child might still achieve the perceived end goal, but they are unlikely to be prepared to make the most of it.?

They might:

1/ Fear making mistakes.

2/ Feel anxious about impressing others.

3/ Lose enjoyment in the game.

4/ Experience a decline in self-confidence.

The game is meant to be a vessel for greater things, including outcomes we could have never predicted in the first place, so as parents, we must find a new way to relate to our children and support their growth in the game.

And that adjustment lies in valuing the small wins.

Here are 5 ways small wins benefit our children in the long run

1. Keeps Emotional Tank Filled

We should not allow our dedication and mindset to be confined by things beyond our control.

As a player, you can't guarantee wins or playing time, but regardless of the outcome, there is always room for improvement. Small wins are everywhere. They might either be a deliberate focus before the match or an unexpected achievement, but their significant impact lies in sustaining our emotional involvement in the game, providing the impetus to continuously improve.

Small wins, more than anything, provide the energy and motivation to keep iterating towards our potential.

2. Helps Them Handle Setbacks

Small wins teach children to grow from adversity.

If your child is not as outcome focused, they’ll understand that bad results, challenges and misfortune are not just outside their control, but something they can leverage into future growth. Again, development? requires sustained iterations, so if our children’s energy and emotions are reliant on outcomes they can’t control, then they won’t be able to sustain growth over a longer period of time. Small wins can help anyone deal with adversity and have enough energy to continue showing up for the next iteration.

When things don’t go our way, small wins sustain us.

3. They’ll Seek Out Improvement

Small wins have a best friend–they’re called “smaller circles”.

Smaller circles are next improvements. Small wins create a momentum that empowers our children long-term: small wins provide energy, that energy helps in working on the smaller circles, and then those smaller circles produce new small wins. The more our children internalize this flywheel, the more likely they grow and enjoy the process.

The real gift of small wins (and smaller circles) is that they give us a process to lean on throughout our lives, both on and off the field.

4. Bridge Towards Autonomy

And as our children grow and become more process focused, we can slowly give them more autonomy.

Again, the point isn't to grind towards an end goal. The aim is to nurture children who can independently manage the end goal with decreasing reliance on parental support. Of the many goals parents should have, creating autonomous children who are prepared and able to handle more and more should be near the top of the list.

Small wins provide children the opportunity to mature over a long stretch, which better prepares them for what lies ahead.

5. Prepares Them For Their Lives Off the Pitch

And what lies ahead doesn't occur exclusively on a soccer field.

The number of American kids who play college and professional soccer are extremely low, but the game, in tandem with small wins, can prepare everyone for our eventual lives off the field. We want autonomous children, but we also want children who understand that as much as they love the game, their identity is much greater than that of a successful soccer player. Small wins are attainable in any game they choose to play–new careers, marriage and even becoming a parent themselves.

Finding and celebrating the small win will prepare children for their adult lives both on and off a field.

Conclusion

Our children look to us for safety and love, but sometimes we forget the third job–to develop them towards their potential.

As a college coach, I felt a lot of times that parents were more excited about having their child in college than the child was. My perspective was that many parents prioritized getting their children into college rather than adequately preparing them to thrive and be their best selves in that college environment. It was as if a “mission accomplished” banner should have been hung at the entrance way to the college when students arrived for their first semester.

But by supporting our children in discovering small wins (alongside smaller circles) on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis, we enable them to develop the life-long skill of being process oriented, which better prepares them for whatever the next phase may be.

Development compounds only if we are able to consistently give focused energy to the next rep, week, season and sustain that effort over time–otherwise, life becomes a grind towards an end goal that our children are ultimately unprepared for.

A focus on small wins over winning allows our children the opportunity to better enjoy the process AND be successful along the way.

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