A kid went 0 for 4 last Saturday. The parent watching was the assistant coach and also, technically, the parent. That’s a complicated set of facts to drive home with.

Most get this wrong. The kid gets in the car. The parent opens with something they think is helpful. The kid doesn’t say anything for the rest of the day. Sunday morning, he asks if he can skip practice. Monday at breakfast, he says he never wants to play baseball again. By Tuesday he’s fine. But the whole week, the house has a weather pattern.

The problem is the first ninety seconds.

What the window actually does

The first ninety seconds after a game decide what the next week looks like in your house. Coaches know this. Most parents do not, because the window closes before you have finished gathering the cooler and the sweatshirt.

In those ninety seconds, your kid is asking one quiet question. Is this still a place I want to be? Not the team. The car. The relationship. You.

The answer they get from your face and your first sentence sets the temperature for every conversation about the sport for the next seven days.

What keeps going wrong

The wrong answer is the recap. That second pitch you took, you knew that was a strike, right? Said as teaching. The kid hears blame. The car gets quiet. The week gets quiet.

The wrong answer is the score. Tough game. The kid lived the score. They don’t need it confirmed.

The wrong answer is the opponent. That kid was huge. The opponent gets bigger in their head, not smaller.

What I am trying to do instead

Three things, in this order. They are short on purpose.

One. Pick a specific moment he had agency in. Not a moment that decided the score. Glad you got to bat in the fourth. Or I liked how you ran out the ground ball. Something he chose to do, not something that happened to him.

Two. Stop talking. Just for a mile. The silence does the work.

Three. Mention something else that has nothing to do with the sport. Pizza for dinner. The dog needing a walk. Did you finish the chapter for English? That sentence tells him that home is bigger than the game and the game is one piece of his life, not all of it.

The longer version of this lives in our free playbook. By sport. By age. The exact words for baseball, soccer, theater, choir, dance. Get it here.

The longer arc

Teaching does happen. Just not Saturday at 1pm. By Sunday afternoon, if the first ninety seconds go well, the kid will bring it up himself. They’ll say something like I think I should have moved on the line drive sooner. That sentence is what good coaching at home looks like. It belongs to them.

You earned that sentence by saying almost nothing two hours after the game.

Most weeks most of us get this wrong on at least one of the three. Then we try again next Saturday.

If you’re a mom or a dad with a kid in the car right now, we’re rooting for you. The window is short, but it opens again next Saturday. ������������������������