Why Some Kids Would Rather Not Try Than Risk Failing

The seven-year-old boy had a white-knuckle grip on the ice rink wall, refusing to let go.

“Can you just try?” his dad asked, waiting a few feet away on his skates. The boy shook his head and scooted closer to the wall.

For the next few minutes, they repeated this cycle — his dad encouraged him, reassured him, tried to convince him he’d be okay. The son refused to let go. Over-and-over.

Standing nearby, I found myself paying as much attention to the dad’s mounting frustration and attempts as I was to boy hanging on for dear life. And eventually, I realized I wasn’t really watching a skating lesson anymore. I was watching one of the most misunderstood pressure patterns I see in youth sports — fear of failure.

If you’ve spent enough time around kids, you’ve probably seen this pattern too. Maybe it wasn’t on the ice. Maybe it was on a baseball field, a basketball court, a soccer pitch, a gymnastics floor, the backyard, or maybe even when they’re trying to tackle their math homework.

But you’ve seen it — the capable athlete won’t try, take the next step, or give their full effort. And it can be one of the most frustrating and helpless situations parents often face.

And, based on what we see, we think they won’t let go of the wall or just try the thing because they’re scared or unwilling.

And you might be right… sort of. But the real answer lies in the questions we so often miss are: What are they really scared of? What are they unwilling to experience?

Turns out, letting go of the wall wasn’t really the problem. What seemed to matter more was the possibility of failing in front of a rink full of people.

And without knowing that, the dad was pulling all the wrong levers to help him.

Parents see this behavior and usually don’t describe it or see it as a fear of failure. They describe what they can see. Their athlete...

• avoids difficult situations

• refuses to try something new

• procrastinates

• becomes unusually upset after small mistakes

• blames teammates, coaches, or officials

• makes excuses or becomes defensive

• plays cautiously instead of freely

• suddenly “doesn’t care”

• wants to quit when things become hard

It’s confusing because you know they’re capable of more. You’ve watched them do it in practice. You’ve seen flashes during games. So you naturally start wondering... “What’s going on?”

One of the reasons fear of failure is so easy to misunderstand is because it rarely looks like fear. It often looks like perfectionism. Overthinking. Playing safe. Making excuses. Blaming officials. Shutting down. Or deciding they simply don’t care anymore.

Most parents jump right to fixing and make assumptions like they just need to build up their athlete’s confidence through more training or the right lecture, but I’m not convinced confidence is where the story starts.

One thing I’ve noticed after years of watching athletes — and later coaching adults — is that fear of failure rarely starts with failure itself. It starts with what failure has come to mean to them.

For one athlete, striking out simply means... “I struck out.”
For another, it quietly becomes...
“I let everyone down.”
“Dad’s going to be disappointed.”
“Maybe I’m not as good as everyone thinks.”
”I should have been able to get a hit.”

Same result. Completely different experience. The athlete isn’t afraid of striking out, they’re afraid of what the strikeout means about them or to others. The strike out isn’t the problem… the problem is the threat they feel because of it. The failure is threatening something bigger than the failure itself.

That “something bigger” looks different for every athlete. Sometimes it’s their identity. Sometimes it’s belonging. Sometimes it’s approval. Sometimes it’s control. But when failure begins threatening something beyond the scoreboard, avoiding it starts to feel like the safest option.

There isn’t one answer to why fear of failure takes hold. Every athlete is different, and we should be careful not to assume we know exactly what’s driving any one child’s behavior. But I’ve noticed a few patterns that show up over and over again.

• Performance starts feeling personal. Fear gets much stronger when failure stops meaning, “I didn’t perform well.” and starts meaning, “There’s something wrong with me.” Interestingly, decades of research support this distinction. Children respond differently when we praise who they are versus what they did. “You’re such a great hitter.” sounds encouraging. Until the day they go 0-for-4. Now they’re left wondering... “If I’m not hitting well...am I still a great hitter?… am I still a great player?… am I still great?” Identity praise can quietly raise the stakes.

• The (un)spoken tension changes the game. Kids notice far more than we realize. They notice the look on our face after an error, the air of loss in the car, the long post-game lecture, the extra excitement after a great game, and the silence after a difficult one. Children, because they are dependent on adults, are constantly asking the quiet question: “Are we still okay?” They need you to survive, and whether they realize it or not, they are constantly evaluating the status of your relationship. Over time, the nervous system becomes a pretty good statistician. If enough mistakes are followed by tension, criticism, embarrassment, distance, or just ‘bad vibes’, it begins making predictions like: Failure means something unpleasant is about to happen… so maybe just avoid it.

• High expectations have unintended consequences. Nuance matters here — so stay with me. Expectations are not bad. Wanting excellence isn't the enemy. But there is a difference between: “I believe you’re capable of doing hard things” and “People like us don’t play like that.” Or: “Your goal is to compete at every opportunity” versus: “You cannot strike out looking.” One communicates belief. The other communicates that certain outcomes are unacceptable. When the environment says: “What can you learn?” or “What can you do differently next time?” failure contains information. When the environment says: “How do you measure up to an outcome or to others?” failure contains judgment. And to avoid judgement, it feels safer to not even try.

The environment teaches what mistakes mean.

Some environments treat mistakes or failures as information. Others treat them as judgment. One asks, “What did you learn for next time?” The other asks, “Why did you do that?” One invites curiosity. The other invites self-protection. That’s an important distinction.

The goal isn’t lowering expectations. The goal is changing what failure predicts. The good news is, you — the adult — influence the environment heavily.

Every parent or coach wants to help. When we watch our kids struggle, our instinct is to fix it. Ironically, that’s where many of us accidentally strengthen the pattern. Here are some things to watch out for:

• Don’t punish failure. I’m not just talking about obvious punishment. I’m talking about emotional punishment too — the cold shoulder, the sarcastic comment, the disappointed sigh, the twenty-minute lecture on the drive home. Failure should have learning consequences, not relational consequences. That distinction matters greatly.

• Don’t rush into coaching. Sometimes our athlete doesn’t need immediate instruction. They need to know they’re still safe, still connected, still okay. If correction comes before connection, we don’t create enough space to safely try, fail, and try again.

• Don’t focus on outcomes. Your athlete can’t control wins, hits, points scored, etc. Sure, they can influence those things with their actions, effort, and attitude, but the end result ultimately isn’t under their control. If your correction and your praise are focused on those results, their attention — and their fear — is focused on the outcome instead of the parts of the process that they can do something about.

• And don’t rescue them from every difficult experience. Supported struggle develops confidence; protected comfort rarely does. Confidence doesn’t come from telling someone they’ll succeed. It comes from repeatedly discovering, “That was hard...and I handled it.” Self-trust and confidence are built brick-by-brick through experiences that give us proof we can get through it… even if we fail.

The goal isn’t to eliminate failure. The goal is to change what failure predicts. Right now, an athlete may believe...

Failure → Shame.
Failure → Disappointment.
Failure → Judgment.

We want them to experience something different:

Failure → Information.
Failure → Support.
Failure → Adjustment.
Failure → Another opportunity.

So here are seven things to help your athlete when they’re experiencing a fear of failing:

1. Separate the child from the performance. Your first job is protecting this distinction: Performance is something they did. It is not who they are. Instead of: “You were amazing,” “You’re a natural,” or falling back to empty platitudes like “You worked so hard.” Use more information-rich observations where you focus on effort + strategy + effect. For example: “You shortened your swing with two strikes and put two balls in play. That adjustment worked.” This helps them learn that behavior influences outcomes.

2. Make failure emotionally safe without pretending it feels good. Don’t tell a disappointed child: “It’s no big deal.” Sometimes it is a big deal to them. Instead, communicate that they can be disappointed here and still be safe, connected and capable. That might sound like: “You really wanted that one.” or “I can see how frustrated you are.” And then, importantly, don’t immediately fix it. Let the emotion exist without making the child wrong for having it. We want the lesson to become: Failure hurts. And I can handle hurt. That is much more useful than: Failure shouldn’t bother me.

3. Shift post-performance conversations from evaluation to curiosity. Instead of: “What happened out there?” Try questions that restore agency:

   “What did you notice?”

   “What felt different today?”

   “What were you thinking there?”

   “What worked?”

   “What would you try next time?”

   The psychological shift from judgment → investigation is subtle but massive. Help them become a student of their performance instead of a defendant explaining it.

4. Give your athlete genuine ownership. Fear rises when children feel both: I must succeed and I don’t control anything. So, allow appropriate choices.

   What do they want to work on? What do they think happened? Do they want feedback now or later? What strategy do they want to try? Autonomy isn’t permissiveness. You can still have standards. You are simply shifting from: Perform the way I require. toward: Let’s help you learn to navigate performance.

5. Change the scoreboard. If the child’s only definition of success is an uncontrollable result, fear makes sense. A hitter cannot completely control hits, wins, making the team, umpire calls, playing time. They can control far more of their decisions, preparation, aggressiveness, recovery after mistakes, communication, effort, attitude. When success becomes multidimensional, a child can experience failure without experiencing total failure.

6. Let them experience manageable failure. This one is counterintuitive. You do not help an athlete overcome fear of failure by preventing failure. All that teaches is that failure really is dangerous and I need protection from it. Instead, children need repeated, manageable experiences of: I failed → nothing terrible happened → I figured something out → I tried again. Think psychological batting practice: Small exposures. Appropriate challenge. Then recovery.

   The objective isn’t desensitizing the child until they don’t care. It’s building evidence that they know what to do when this happens.

7. Watch your response immediately after failure. This may be the most practical — and most important — thing parents and coaches can change. Children are paying extraordinary attention to you after a mistake: Your face. Your shoulders. Your sigh. The walk back to the car. The silence. The speed at which you begin coaching. That means the first intervention isn’t necessarily something brilliant you say. Sometimes it’s simply maintaining the same warmth, connection, relationship. Then later comes the Want to talk about the game? conversation. Your responses may communicate more than any ten-minute resilience speech ever could.

Why I pay so much attention to moments like the little boy holding onto the side of the skating rink is because pressure didn’t create his response. Pressure revealed it.

And I love that youth sports reveal patterns while they’re still developing. That’s the golden opportunity we have as the adults who support young athletes.

If we notice a pattern early, we can help them develop a better response now so that the next time they give it their all. That’s what closes the performance-potential gap. That’s what builds true resiliency so when the stakes are higher, they’re willing to step up to the plate. They’re willing to make the play. Take the shot.

In my career coaching days, I coached adults who desperately wanted something different — a new job, a promotion, starting a business, having the difficult conversation they’d been avoiding. Most weren’t held back by ability. They were held back by the possibility of getting it wrong.

So many of my clients came to be afraid of even looking for a new job because “What if it doesn’t work out.” They would stay stuck, miserable, for years.

We don’t have to wait until someone is forty-five years old, stuck in a career they hate. We can begin helping them develop a different relationship with mistakes while they’re still kids, playing a sport they love.

Not by changing who they are, but by helping them develop how they respond.

That’s the reason I pay attention to youth sports. I’ve already seen where these patterns often go.

If you’ve read this and thought, “That’s exactly my kid,” remember this: the behavior is observable. The reason behind it isn’t. That’s why curiosity matters more than assumptions.

The next time your athlete refuses to try, plays cautiously, or falls apart after a mistake, resist the urge to ask, “How do I stop this?” and instead, get curious: “What might this be revealing?”

You can’t stop your athlete from failing. Failure comes for us all and it never feels good in the moment. But you have enormous influence over what failure feels like when they get home.

And when failure stops feeling like a threat... athletes become willing to take the risks that help them grow. On the field today and in life later, when the stakes are much higher.

If you want to see if Fear of Failure is one of your athlete’s underlying pressure patterns, check out my Athlete Performance Blueprint™. They take a 10 minute assessment and you get a deep dive into how they’re wired, what gets them going, what gets in their way, and what to do about it.

No more guessing. No more fighting the wrong problem.
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