When Your Child Is the Worst Player on the Team

My son was the worst player on his team. Not by a little, by a lot.

He was nine years old, in his second year of coach pitch, and while the other kids were hitting line drives and making routine plays, he was striking out consistently and dropping balls that should have been easy catches.

I almost pulled him from the team.

Instead, I asked him, one evening after practice, if he wanted to keep playing. He looked at me like I had asked a strange question. Of course he wanted to keep playing. He loved his teammates. He loved the uniform. He loved the snacks after the game.

He was not suffering. I was.

That realization changed everything. I stopped measuring his experience by the standards I had imported from somewhere else and started measuring it by the only standard that mattered: was he happy?

He was happy. He was genuinely, completely happy.

He is twelve now and still playing. He is not the worst player on his team anymore. But even if he were, I would know better than to care.