What to Say to a Child
After a Bad Chess Game.
The first sentence after a child’s chess loss matters more than parents realise. Three sentences in particular accidentally do harm, namely the ones that turn a single result into a verdict on the child. Here is what to say instead, and why.
You are in the car park. The round is over. Your child walks toward you with the look you already know means it did not go well. The next thing you say is going to land harder than you think. It is not because parents say cruel things. The opposite. Most chess parents are careful, supportive, encouraging. The problem is structural. The very kindest things parents tend to say accidentally pull the child from one kind of feeling into a much more difficult kind.
This is short and practical. What to avoid, what to say instead, and why the difference matters.
What is actually happening after the loss
A chess loss produces three different results in the same minute. There is the official result. There is the technical result, namely what the engine will say if you check the moves later. And there is the silent result, namely the story the player begins telling themselves about the kind of player they are. The third one is where the trouble starts.
Children often arrive in the car park with all three already running. They know they lost. They have a guess about what move went wrong. And they are already drafting a sentence in their head that begins with “I am”. The job in the next sixty seconds is not to comfort the third sentence. The job is to keep it from being written.
Three sentences to avoid
These are the three patterns I see most often. None of them is mean. All of them are accidentally identity-forming. The reason they cause trouble is that they treat the single game as evidence about the player rather than evidence about the moves.
“You played terribly today.”
Names a player, not a game. The child agrees and now believes it. By the next round they are a player who plays terribly, which is a different problem from one bad game.
“It does not matter, it is just a game.”
Sounds kind. Tells the child their reaction is wrong. They came out of the round with a real feeling, namely loss, and the parent has just said the feeling does not belong. The child swallows it instead of moving through it.
“I knew you should have studied more.”
Converts the loss into the parent’s case. The child stops thinking about the game and starts defending themselves. Nothing useful is going to come out of this conversation now.
“You are better than that kid anyway.”
Solves the identity verdict by attacking another child’s identity verdict. Models the behaviour you do not want to see in your own child. Also untrue often enough that the child stops trusting future encouragement.
Three sentences to use instead
The frame is simple. Stay on the game, not the player. Ask before assessing. Wait for the technical conversation until later, namely until the engine review or the coach. The first sixty seconds are about the game, not the verdict.
“What was the position when it got hard?”
Lands on the game, not the player. Invites a technical answer the child can actually give. Pulls the conversation away from the identity verdict and toward the move.
“That looks like a hard one. Want a minute?”
Names the feeling and gives space. Does not deny the loss. Does not amplify it. Lets the child decide when they are ready to talk, which is often two or three minutes later than the parent thinks.
“What did you see at the board that you want to look at later?”
Treats the child as a player whose perception is the relevant data. They go home thinking about a position to study, not a verdict to defend.
“I am proud of how you sat there for four hours.”
Praises the trainable thing, namely the sustained focus the round required, rather than the result. Acknowledges that the child did real work regardless of the outcome.
What you are protecting across years
A chess career is long. Strong adult players have lost thousands of rated games. The relationship a player has with losing is built in the first hundred losses, namely the ones that happen in childhood. If those early losses get filed under “what kind of player I am”, every subsequent loss will be filed there too. If they get filed under “what happened in the position”, every subsequent loss will be reviewable, learnable, and survivable.
The single highest-leverage move a chess parent can make over a junior career is keeping the identity verdict separate from the technical verdict. It is not about being lighter on the child. It is about not letting the result write a sentence about who they are.
What about the technical review
There is a real place for “you should have seen that knight”. It is not the car park. It is the engine review the next day, with you or a coach beside the child, talking about the move rather than the player. By then the identity verdict has settled and the child can engage with the technical question without their self-worth in the room.
If the engine review is not happening because there is no coach available, that is fine. The order matters more than the depth. First the loss is allowed to be a feeling. Then it becomes a position. Then it becomes a lesson. Skipping straight to lesson while the feeling is still raw is what produces the children who quit the game in their early teens.
The Three Verdicts Sorter
A short, private reflection tool the child can do alone, on a phone, after a hard game. Sorts the loss into the three verdicts, namely the official, the technical, and the identity, and helps keep the third one from absorbing the first two. Built for the player who has just lost. Six minutes. Nothing stored.
Open the tool →What if the child does not want to talk
That is information, not failure. Many children process competitive disappointment slowly. The car ride home is often too soon. The shower that night, or breakfast the next morning, or the walk to the next round, is often when the conversation actually wants to happen. The parent’s job is to be available, not to extract.
If your child reaches for their phone in the car and does not look up, that is acceptable. The conversation will come. What you do not want is to fill the silence with the three sentences above out of awkwardness. Silence with someone who loves you is a different experience from being alone with the loss. The presence is doing work even when the conversation is not.
If you only remember one thing
Stay on the game, not the player. Stay on the position, not the kind of person they are. Stay on the move, not the verdict. The result already happened. The story about the result is the part that is still being written, and you have a vote.
The framework, written long enough to last the whole junior career.
The Human Move is the book version of this article, namely the long-form case for keeping the verdicts apart through every loss your child will accumulate over the next ten years. Written for the player, the coach, and the parent.
Kerim Demirkol is a competitive chess player, swimmer, triathlete, and Certified Fitness Trainer and Instructor. He is the author of the Lessons from the Board essay series at kerimdemirkol.com and the book The Human Move.
Discover more from Kerim Demirkol
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Leave a Reply