What theater and sports have taught my kids about resilience

There's a particular kind of quiet that fills a car after a cast list goes up and your child's name isn't where they hoped it would be. I know that quiet. I’ve sat with each of my daughters, watching hope drain from their faces and transform into complete anguish. I’ve stayed up with them at night as they cry themselves to sleep trying to make sense of it all.

As a parent, I've lived these moments more than once. As a mental health therapist, I've come to understand why they matter so much more than they seem to in the moment.

The Myth of the Smooth Path

We tend to think of resilience as something children naturally develop as they grow up. No parent wants to see their child let down; there is an inherent part of us that wishes they didn’t have to to experience disappointment. But what I've watched unfold with my own children, and what I see reflected in my work with clients, is that the disappointment is the lesson. It's not a detour from the growth. It's the playing field the growth happens on.

When my kids didn't get the part they auditioned for, or didn't make the starting lineup they'd trained for, something important was available to them in that moment, something a smooth path never could have offered. They had to sit with disappointment that was real, that wasn't hypothetical, and figure out what to do with it while everyone around them kept moving forward.

The rehearsal didn't stop.

The season didn't get cancelled.

Life, and the team, and the production, all continued. They had to decide how they were going to show up inside of that. I’ve watched them navigate how to choose the better path despite wanting to give it all up because that would be the easier.

Experiential Learning: Why Telling Isn't Teaching

In my practice, I talk with clients often about the difference between knowing something and learning it through experience. Consciously knowing something is only 5% of who we are. You can tell a child that resilience matters, that failure is part of growth, that character is built in hard moments. They'll nod, because it sounds true. But that knowledge stays abstract until they've lived it.

Theater and sports are, in a sense, built-in laboratories for this kind of experiential learning.

My kids didn't become resilient because I explained resilience to them. They are becoming more resilient because they lived through not getting what they wanted and had to decide, in real time, whether they were going to sulk on the sidelines or find their role within what was actually in front of them. Choosing the latter at an earlier age will prepare them for these kind of moments in adulthood. We all know they are inevitable.

Learning Your Role, Even When It Isn't the One You Wanted

One of the most valuable things I've watched my children absorb- and one of the most valuable reframes I offer clients- is showing up powerfully in your role. Not the role you imagined for yourself. The one you actually have.

The understudy who shows up to every rehearsal with full commitment. The kid on the bench who's the loudest cheerleader and stays ready in case their number is called. There is enormous character built in showing up fully even when things didn’t go your way.

This is where team environments do something individual pursuits often can't. Being a part of a team or a cast are are bigger than any one person's disappointment. Being part of something like that means learning that other people are counting on you to show up, even on the day you didn't get what you wanted. That's not a small thing to learn as a kid. It's not a small thing for any of us to relearn as adults, either.

Thriving isn’t Always Dramatic

If there's one thing I want parents to take from watching their own kids move through these moments it’s that thriving in adversity rarely looks dramatic. It doesn't look like a triumphant speech where the audience gives you a round of applause. Instead, it looks like a kid getting up the next morning and going to practice anyway. It looks like someone showing up to the theater for all the rehearsals even when they didn’t get the lead.

That is resilience. Not the absence of disappointment, but the decision (made quietly, and often repeatedly) to keep showing up inside of it.

As parents, our job isn't to shield our kids from the cast list or the roster. I’ve secretly hoped many times that I could postpone the reveal forever. It’d be much easier (and less heartbreaking) to say the show just got canceled. No, our job is instead support them in facing it head-on. It's to be there in the car afterward. To let the disappointment be real without rushing to fix it. To let them feel it, work through it, and still decide to show up anyway. And then to trust that the discomfort itself is building the same muscle they'll need for every version of "I didn't get what I wanted" that adulthood has waiting for them.