Your Kid Lost in the First Round — Here's What to Do (and Not Do) in the Car Ride Home

The match is over. Your kid lost. Maybe it was close — a third-set tiebreak that could have gone either way. Maybe it wasn't — a lopsided score that was over before it started. Either way, you're walking to the car with a kid who is somewhere between furious and devastated. What you do in the next 30 minutes matters more than you think.

Rule #1: Don't Talk About the Match Right Away

This is the hardest rule to follow and the most important. Your child just experienced a real, visceral disappointment. They don't need analysis right now. They need to feel whatever they're feeling — frustration, sadness, anger — without having to process your feelings too. Talk about something completely unrelated. Food is always a safe topic. Allowing some silence and giving them space is also helpful.

What NOT to Say

"You should have hit more to her backhand." "Why did you stop running?" "If you had just served better in the second set..." Every one of these sentences, no matter how well-intentioned, lands as criticism. Replaying the mistakes immediately after the match just deepens the wound.

What to Say Instead

"I'm proud of you for competing." "That took a lot of guts." "Want to grab food?" Keep it simple. Validate the effort, not the result. If your child wants to talk about the match, let them lead. Some kids process out loud — they'll bring it up themselves once the sting has faded. Others need hours or even a day before they're ready.

Sleep-On-It Rule

Many experienced tennis families follow a sleep-on-it rule: no detailed match discussion until the next day. This gives everyone time to cool down and gain perspective. When you do talk about it, ask your child their impressions of the match and what went right and what went wrong. If they know what went wrong then you don’t need to criticize—you can focus on helping them or working with their coaches on addressing those issues. If you have advice on issues that they didn’t bring up, try to distill it down to no more than two things — not a laundry list of everything that went wrong.

It's a Long Journey

One loss doesn't define your child's tennis career. Some of the best players in the world lost early and often as juniors. What matters is whether your child wants to get back on the court and try again. Your job is to make sure that desire survives the car ride home.