My younger son bats near the bottom of the lineup.

He knows he plays well, I know that too and for a while it really bothered him.

For me, I know exactly why it's happening. We say no to a lot of practices. He plays tennis too, both boys have other things going on, and we decided a long time ago that we weren't handing an entire season over to one sport. So he misses practices and the kids who are present every week bat higher.

That's not unfair. That's a trade, and we made it on purpose.

But it took him a while to understand it properly. When he was younger and getting frustrated about this, the honest answer was that he isn't at the practices where a coach could see and test him and then decide.

I think a lot of parents struggle with this on both ends. More so, how to communicate it to the kid and the coach too. 

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NOBODY TELLS YOU HOW TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION

Even when you're at peace with the trade, it’ll still come up every season, and the coach would bring it up more often if your kid is any good.

Most of us handle it badly and in one of two directions.

We over-explain. A long apologetic account of the family calendar that sounds like we're asking for a favor or we say nothing at all, just quietly miss practices, and let the coach draw his own conclusions about how committed we are.

The first invites a negotiation. The second makes you look like you don't care.

Here's roughly what we actually say:

"He's doing tennis this season as well, so he'll be at the games and he'll make the practices he can but he won't be at all of them. I know that affects where he sits in the lineup, and we're okay with that."

The last part does all the work. Most friction between parents and coaches isn't about the absence, it's about a parent who wants the reduced commitment and the starting spot. Once you say out loud that you're accepting the trade, there's nothing left to negotiate and the conversation just ends.

I've never had it go badly. But for some of you it does…

THE HARDER VERSION: WHEN SOMETHING IS ACTUALLY WRONG

This is the one that keeps parents up.

Your kid doesn't want to go. They're miserable about a thing they used to love and you genuinely cannot tell whether something is wrong with the team or whether your child is just eleven and having a bad month.

Get that wrong in one direction and you've dragged a kid through a season that was actively bad for them. Get it wrong in the other and you've taught them that when something is hard, a parent arrives and fixes it.

Our first response is always the boring one. Come on, you can stick it out. It's not that bad. We say that every time, because usually it's right, they'll meet difficult situations their whole lives and this is a reasonably safe one to practice on.

But then I watch for a pattern, and I look for two things.

Is it only my kid? If he's frustrated and nobody else is, that's information about him. Maybe he's tired, maybe he wanted a different position, maybe he's eleven.

Or is the whole team flat? This is the one that matters. When my older son was younger, he had a baseball season where he wanted to quit and when I actually looked around, nobody on that team was enjoying it. Kids that age can't tell you the emotional climate of this team is bad, so they just go quiet and stop wanting to go.

When it's everyone, it isn't your kid.

A coach sets the tone for a team. 

WHY THIS HAPPENS SO OFTEN

So you've spotted it. Before you do anything, it's worth understanding what you're usually looking at because it changes how you open the conversation.

At the recreational level, your kid's coach is very often another parent who volunteered. Usually at their own cost, usually in the evenings, usually with no training whatsoever.

Sometimes, it explains what exactly goes wrong: they might know the sport, but that doesn't mean they know kids.

A man who was a good player at seventeen knows baseball. That tells you nothing about whether he knows what an eight-year-old can absorb in one session. Or that leaving the same three kids in the outfield the entire game, waiting for a ball that never comes, teaches those kids they're the spare parts. Or that making the whole team run because they lost is something you do with high schoolers, not with second graders.

That isn't a coach being cruel. It's a blind spot, and it's the most common reason a kid has a miserable season.

It also means you're walking into a conversation with someone who probably has no idea.

A NOTE ABOUT MY HUSBAND

I want to be honest here, my husband coaches my son's baseball team too. 

Some of you know he works in youth sports and sports medicine, that's his profession. He also stands in a dugout on weekends like many dads. So I'm writing this from a slightly odd position, watching it from the sideline and the bench at the same time.

He was quoted this month on how youth training patterns have shifted, and he's the person to go to on sport behavior, burnout, injuries. Part of this is what I'm not qualified to answer, professionally.

So, moving forward you'll be hearing from him too. A short section, one question per issue. If there's something you'd want to ask him, reply to this email. I'm collecting them.

WHAT THE SERIOUS VERSION LOOKS LIKE

Here’s something that happened last season with my younger one’s team. There was a dad who genuinely knew baseball, he'd been a good player himself and wanted to help, so he was offered a role as the third base coach, out on the field with the kids.

But he was relentless with them. “Come on, why didn't you do it?”

Constant and hardest of all on his own son, in front of everyone: “we practiced this and you still can't do it.”

Two or three other parents complained about this behavior independently to my husband, which put him in a genuinely difficult spot, because the man's son was also a player on the team, so what he ended up sending was a simple message on why it’s not working and he’s being let go.

No character assessment, no list of incidents. The decision, the reason, and the kid's place are protected in the first line.

That's the thing about hard conversations. They're shorter than you expect.

THE WORDS FOR RAISING SOMETHING

If you've watched for a pattern and there's genuinely something there to discuss, here’s how to raise it:

1. Not at the field. Not after a game, not in the parking lot, not where other parents can hear. Everyone's adrenaline is up, including yours. Wait a day.

2. Open with a question, not a verdict. "I wanted to check in, my kid’s been a bit down about it lately and I wasn't sure whether you'd noticed anything at practice." That gives the coach somewhere to go. "You're being too hard on them" gives them nowhere to go but backwards.

3. Ask what you can work on. "Is there something specific we should be focusing on?" Whatever comes back tells you whether this coach has actually been watching your kid, which is often the real thing you wanted to know.

Never open with "I'm not that parent, but." You are, in that moment, and you've just told them so.

4. If it's not only your kid, say that. "A few of us have noticed the kids don't seem to be enjoying it much this season."That's not an accusation, and it's much harder to wave away than one parent's complaint.

If none of it lands, you're allowed to leave. Find another team or another coach. I know that's easier said than done, and sometimes there genuinely isn't another option. But staying isn't automatically the noble choice. Sometimes it's just a bad year you didn't have to have.

A Note for My Fellow Laid-Back Parents

I'm not writing this as someone who's cracked it. I've sat in a car with a boy who didn't want to go back to a team and living with a coach means I've also watched the version where a parent is certain something is unfair and it simply isn't.

Most of the time the answer is to say nothing at all. Let them bat eighth.

Let them be annoyed about it.
Let them work out for themselves that showing up is what moves you up, because that's a more useful thing to learn than anything I could tell them.

But when nobody on that team is having any fun, and your kid has stopped wanting to go, that isn't your kid being soft.

The skill isn't being able to confront a coach. It's knowing which of the two you're looking at.

See you next week,
Lakshmi 💛

P.S. The new section with my husband starts soon. Hit reply with what you'd want to ask him and I promise to get you an answer.