Your Child’s Worth Isn’t Measured by the Scoreboard

So many parents are facing a quiet heartbreak: the pain of watching their child not make the team, not get invited, not fit in. You work hard, provide opportunities, and do your best, but there are things money can’t buy. You can’t buy a way into the inner circle. You can’t force acceptance. When your child is the one always on the outside looking in, it breaks you.

Why is it always my child who is pushed aside?

Why does inclusion feel like a privilege instead of a right?

It’s painful because we know what inclusion felt like when we were kids, what it meant to be picked, to be noticed, to belong. We also know what it felt like to be left out. That sting stays with you. Now we’re watching history repeat itself in a way, with the most precious people in our lives.

But here’s the hard truth: society has quietly redefined “cool.”

It’s no longer about being kind, creative, or uniquely brilliant. It’s about fitting a mold; looking a certain way, playing a certain sport, having the right social currency. Rugby, cricket, netball, athletics. If you don’t shine there, you’re labelled “not sporty,” “not talented,” “not enough.”

But who decided those were the only lanes that matter?

What about the kid who creates magic on canvas, who builds, designs, sings, writes, thinks differently? Why isn’t that the measure of worth? Why are the arts, the makers, the dreamers, and the quiet leaders overlooked while only a few are celebrated?

As a teenager, I came across these words by Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure… Your playing small does not serve the world… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us… As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

We cannot allow our children to play small. We, as parents, cannot play small either.

Because if we don’t see their light, how will they?

If we don’t celebrate the sparkle in their eyes when they’re dancing in the living room or building something from nothing, who will show them their value?

Let’s shift. Let’s start celebrating the real victories:

• The Friday night concerts in your lounge.

• The scribbled artwork taped to the fridge.

• The homemade comic strips.

• The ideas they whisper when no one else is listening.

  
  

These are not little moments. They’re life-shaping ones. They build confidence. They shape identity. They whisper to your child, you matter.

So no, maybe your child didn’t make the team.

But maybe, just maybe, he or she is here to lead a different one.

Wearing my mom cap 🩶