Not making the cut for a sports team can be a major let-down to kids, who are used to when they're little endless praise and being told that they can accomplish anything they wish. These moments become even more painful when the child has spent years training and rising within his sport, only to be cut at the elite, competitive or later levels. Additionally, this can have a major impact on the friendships he has formed, and drastically change a social world that is so often formed around sports.

Our children's rules have become ever increasingly dominated by new levels of competitiveness in our activity-frenzied culture of over-achievement. There is an underlying pernicious message our children absorb: they must not be good enough just being, it’s only through doing that they validate themselves in your eyes and in those of their peers, coaches, and teachers. Excelling and winning in the forms of all-star games, trophies, Little League World Series Championships and Youth Super Bowl titles have taken precedence over having fun. As a parent, it is critical that you place the emphasis in your words and language to encouraging and supporting your child to do her best, rather than try to be the best.

Your child will thrive most, and be best able to bounce back from moments of rejection or failure when she has a close relationship with you, a happy, relaxed family life, and a deep understanding that she is loved just for being herself, and not because of the activities at which she excels.

Children acquire self-reliance and resilience through making mistakes and getting beyond them. In order for your child to develop a strong sense of herself, she has to feel not only free to fail, but to experience failure and move beyond it. The message you send your child when you choose is that she lacks the ability or maturity to make responsible or thoughtful decisions on her own.

Here are some tips from THE MOM BOOK:

Elite Teams:

• Competitive tryouts involve coaches selecting team members after watching them go through a variety of drills or competitive play in games. For towns with a lot of kids trying out, this process often involves multiple tryout sessions. A process of elimination takes place in the first session in order to make it into the second round. It also involves some hard, subjective decisions by coaches.
• If a child gets cut or doesn’t make a team, she is often discouraged and drops the sport. Remind your child that stories abound of middle-of-the-road young athletes who went on to excel in their high school years and beyond. Their enjoyment of the game kept them interested and improving during critical years of the game, while their more skilled peers may have lost interest.
• For programs that make "cuts," it is important for your child to know in advance that they may not make a team. This can be tough for your child to handle, and for this reason carefully consider how she will handle this before sending her to try out.
• Keep in mind that for every young Olympic star, there are thousands of children who specialized in a sport at an early age, devoted vast amounts of leisure time to pursuing it during countless afternoons and weekends, and did not make the cut as they got older for elite and high school teams. Of the many kids who seem to be incredibly gifted at a sport or activity at age 6, very few will still stand out at age 11. Most early athletic prowess stems from how fast children physically develop, rather than core differences in inherent talent. When it seems that you have a talented child on your hands, the pressure mounts for you to encourage her to specialize in the activity. Yet when other kids start catching up around puberty, your child can feel that all the time and energy that she put into the sport hasn’t paid off, or that she has failed to live up to the coach’s or your expectations for greatness.

Lessons in maturity: having your child find out why and what she can do to change the outcome the next time:

• Your child has been bench-warming, cut from the game or didn't make the tryout. If she’s mature enough, to directly approach her coach.
• If you feel a need to talk things over with your child’s coach, never have a serious conversation right before or after a game when there are too many emotions, distractions, and children needing the coach’s attention. Ask when it would a more convenient time to touch base. Start by saying that you respect his decision but want to understand more clearly the rationale behind it.

Life-lessons:

• Good sportsmanship is a buzzword that our children do understand -- it's been reiterated so many times in their sports-centered lives. Teach your child that being rejected demands that she behave gracefully; it is a fact of life that will crop up many more times.

Your reaction:

• Provide support for your child by listening to her and try to understand her feelings. Ask your child open-ended questions such as, "Did you enjoy yourself?" or "What did you think of the experience/tryout?"
• How you react to wins and losses of your child’s team can set up a dynamic in which your child wants mostly to win to please you and make you proud. Instead of just having fun and enjoying the activity, parental approval or coach approval becomes your child’s driving motivation. Ask about what your child learned, what skill she thinks she’s best at or most needs to improve, and if she enjoyed it.
• Don’t offer much in the way of unsolicited advice, unless your child asks for your help or input. Leave it up to her coaches and teachers to offer constructive feedback and tips for how to improve.
• Make sure that your child knows that whether she makes it or not, you love her, appreciate her efforts, and do not feel disappointed in her. This will prevent her from fearing your disapproval if she fails. Be the one person your child can always look to for encouragement and positive reinforcement.
• While you want to reassure your child, you also want to acknowledge a hard loss and be open to hearing about any frustration, discouragement, anger, or self-criticism your child feels in response.
• Don’t give false praise, which your child will instantly detect and resent. Your child tends to know when she didn’t play her best or made critical mistakes.
• By emphasizing effort, hard work, practice, and learning from mistakes over the final product, you will enable your child to be more resilient when confronting challenges.
• Talk with your child about how you deal with your own mistakes, frustration, and disappointment. Model the behavior you want to see in your child. Dedication, sportsmanship, focus, and confidence are qualities she absorbs by watching you. Make sure that your child does not see you or other adults at your house screaming at the TV because of referee calls, or acting out when losing a game you’re playing. Play board games with your child to work on appropriate reactions to winning and losing.
• It is a constant struggle to keep reminding your child that achieving is not the most important thing. Make sure you share with her all the other values that are important in participating in sports and activities. These include skill-building, and the satisfaction of having given your best effort. Other values to emphasize include fun, fitness and being physically active, improving, persistence, and tenacity. Encourage your child to always think broadly about what accomplishment means. There are important benefits less quantifiable than trophies or awards. Emphasize in actions and words to your child that winning isn’t always the ultimate goal and that there are many equally important ways to be successful.
• Making the team can’t be discounted, as it’s important in a competitive situation, but should be secondary when your child is striving to build skills and achieve personal goals. If you emphasize skill building, you motivate your child to better herself. This places the emphasis on things your child has control over. Lending your child contextual perspective on winning or losing helps your child set achievable goals for herself.
• Measure your child’s performance by the effort she puts forth, the skills she acquires, and her achievement of personal goals. Get your child competing against herself with realistic goals, and concentrating on doing her personal best. If your child conceptualizes success in terms of "am I getting better?" she will focus on mastering new skills and likely stick with the sport longer. If your child’s primary focus in on winning, she will be more likely to want to quit in the face of failure.
• It’s so important that your child know that you value her efforts above all else. That’s not to say that you won’t praise her accomplishments and cheer her victories, but it does mean that you won’t disparage her failures, setbacks, or lack of raw talent at a particular endeavor.

Your own feelings of disappointment:

• Emotions often run high at tryouts because the stakes feel high, given all the practices, time, energy, and family investment that goes into your child participating. It’s natural to want your child to do well. It can also feel at times like your child’s failures are your own.
• Don’t expect your child to be or become one of the best players, and recognize that every child has inevitable lulls in skill development.
• There will be times you watch your child play poorly, and your have to downplay your own frustration or disappointment.

Assessing the situation and working from there:

• Make sure your child is in the right place to compete for her skill level. Her lackluster performance can affect her self-esteem, making her feel negatively about herself in comparison to her friends.
• Your child may feel too much pressure from you, her coach, or her teacher in areas such as skill acquisition, performance, and competition. Give your child extra attention to see if it makes a difference. Set up a place in your home or backyard that’s conducive to casual practice and take the time to play with her just for the sheer fun of it.
• Around ages 12-13, specialization becomes more of an issue, and those children who aren’t the best at something feel discouraged and stop having fun. Children feel that it’s no longer worth the effort it takes for practices, lessons, and games, therefore missing out on social time with friends. Many kids drop out because other players have matured faster, and as a result, they are unable to keep up.
• Determine if more encouragement or individual attention from you or the instructor can resolve the issue at hand. Discuss the possibility of a different teaching approach or perhaps work on a particular skill to overcome a hurdle. This could be anything from difficulty reading music and coordinating finger movements to how to make solid contact with the ball.
• If your child balks at competition, find ways that she can continue the activity without this element, whether it means playing in the backyard or with another league or group.