I Can See It in His Face.
Shane is playing table tennis every week. While his lessons have temporarily subsided, he still goes and plays.
For several weeks, Shane didn’t win a single match. He would kind of freak himself out, worrying about winning, and then – of course – he wouldn’t win. After a few weeks, he finally won a match – and after that, he realized he could win.
Since then, he’s been winning more and more. Most of the people he plays are close to his level – some much better, but most of his matches are competitive. He often wins two and loses three, but he has yet to win all five matches.
It’s painful to watch.
Shane is a very good player. He gets the ball back sometimes when no one should get the ball back. But he is very much a beginning player, and he still has some things to learn. Mostly he needs more practice.
But he thinks he should be better than he is. He beats himself up for not being better faster.
I think he’s doing great. I am watching him and wondering what happened to my little baby who, only a few months ago, couldn’t beat me. And now I can barely get a few points from him on one of his “off” days. So he’s really very good.
But I can see it in his face, when he decides he is afraid he is going to lose.
There’s a shift in his eyes, a lack of confidence. It appears even though there’s no outward reason for it. Suddenly he’ll just be down on himself.
Shane doesn’t seem to know that there’s a shift. I’ve tried to explain some of the psychology of sports, but he is unaware that it’s even happening.
It is not painful to watch Shane lose. Everyone loses once in awhile, even the very best players.
It is painful to watch Shane give up on himself. It is agonizing, in fact. It is the worst part of the parental experience to watch my child’s pain and do absolutely nothing to stop it.
And it’s even more agonizing to know that the reason for that pain is inside my child’s head. If he doesn’t acknowledge it, or know it exists, he can’t know how to stop it.
I minored in psychology in college. I read enough self-help books to have earned an honorary degree in something psychological. And I’ve been in a sufficient amount of therapy myself to know that self-esteem can take over an entire life and ruin it. I also know that low self-esteem does absolutely no good, and is useless to propel one into action. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
So even though the blips of low self-esteem rarely happen except during ping pong, I know it’s going to be hard to overcome.
But Shane is 14, and he hasn’t learned any of that yet. He doesn’t even know he has an element of low self-esteem. He’s a pretty happy kid, all in all, and doesn’t let other people bring him down.
When it comes to ping pong, though, he can beat up himself pretty bad. And he doesn’t even know that he’s doing it.
All of it, I’m sure, is somehow my fault – which adds to the agony of watching.
Of course I would never, ever stop.