My kid lost now what?

   So over the weekend my youngest daughter had a competition.   She usually  does amazing and always places 1st and also receives the highest achievement type of awards.   This time she did not and it wasn't that much of a surprise to me.  And now I am racking my brain trying to figure out what I could have done better as well.

   I'm not that mom who always thinks their kids did better than everyone.  I'm not afraid to admit when my kid kind of sucked lol.    Although I don't tell them that.  

   Anyhow so after leaving the competition she was super disappointed in herself and completely distraught.   I wasn't sure how to handle it.   I told her the typical stuff like, you can't always win, and as long as you had fun that's all that matters.   But in my head I saying much different things.   I wanted to tell her the reasons why she lost.   The fact that she looked bored when on stage with low energy and was very repetitive I knew right away she was not going to rank high.

   I also wanted to critic her on everything she did not do that she normally does, and how if she had listened to me instead of saying "yes mom I know what to do, I've done this before, I don't need you to remind me.

   I could not do this however because she was already coming down on herself and I didn't want to make it worse.   So I just cushioned everything and lied to her and told her that she did amazing when personally I know she did not.  I was trying to also hold back my disappointment and not show it.  My disappointment from how hard I worked on getting her ready for this and prepping her only to have it all turn to mush.

   Once she calmed down I told her that maybe we will try a different approach to things next time and revamp her whole routine.

    So here I am this morning wondering to myself if cushioning things is a good idea or bad.   Wondering if I should have just been straight forward and said "yah you didnt listen to me and this is why you lost and didn't have an amazing competition."   Should I have just been blunt and told her that her performance lacked substance and let her know my critics on her routine so that she may improve those things?


    I don't want to be like those crazy dance/pageant mom's on TV that are yelling at their kid telling them that they didnt win because of the way they did things, but I also don't want to not have her improve on her stuff and learn from her mistakes.

   This is a tough one.   If you have any suggestions or stories that may help solve this mystery  I'd love to hear from you.  You can either send me an email or comment below.   Thanks for listening.

  Sincerely
   A REAL Housewife