Parenting Tips For College Students: Why ‘Sort Of’ Wins Matter More Than You Think
It’s 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, I’m folding laundry when my phone pings. A screenshot from my 19-year-old daughter Lila, blurry around the edges, taken from a printed newsletter tacked to a bulletin board in her college’s student union. The text under it reads: I was in the college newsletter. Sort of.
I squint at the screenshot, can barely make out the two-line blurb: “Local first-year Lila Marlow contributes to campus urban forestry research, helping track growth of 120 new native saplings.” That’s it. No photo, no big headline, tucked between an announcement for the spring theater production and a blurb about a professor’s new $2 million grant.
I flash back to Lila’s first three months of college: every FaceTime ended with some version of “Everyone else here already did research in high school. I just got this work study job because they needed someone to show up. I don’t belong.” I’d spent months falling into the same trap: whenever she mentioned anything small that went right, I’d blow it up to 10 times its size. When she got a B+ on her first essay, I said “That’s incredible! You’re killing it!” and she just shrugged and said “The professor grades easy.” When she told me she’d worked up the courage to go to office hours, I said “That’s such a huge achievement! I’m so proud!” and she changed the subject to how the dorm laundry never dried properly.
So that Tuesday, when I saw the text, I almost typed back the same old over-the-top excitement. But I stopped, typed something else instead: What’s the coolest part of that for you?
Ten minutes later, she texted back. The prof who leads the project remembered my name when I ran into him at the grocery store off campus last week. And I was the one who saw the aphids on the white oaks last month, before anyone else checked them. They treated them early, so 18 of the 20 survived. If I hadn’t been walking by every day watering, they would’ve all died.
I used to teach third grade, and I saw this same dynamic play out in parent-teacher conferences over and over. A kid would come home with a small win—honorable mention at the science fair, a good grade on a spelling test they studied hard for—and the parent would immediately dismiss the smallness of it, or overhype it to the point the kid just checked out. What most parents don’t realize is that when your kid already sees their win as small or “sort of,” pushing back and insisting it’s huge doesn’t build confidence. It just tells them you’re more invested in the idea of their success than they are. It makes them think they have to live up to your version of winning, instead of getting to name their own.
I remember one boy, Ethan, who came to me after the science fair upset. He’d gotten an honorable mention, and his mom had spent the whole ride home telling him he should’ve won first, that the judges were wrong, that his project was way better than the winner’s. When I asked Ethan what he thought, he said he just was proud he got his volcano to erupt on the third try. That was all he cared about. His mom’s big reaction just made him feel like even his best wasn’t enough.
We got on FaceTime that weekend, and Lila pulled the digital version of the newsletter up on her laptop to show me. There it was, two lines, at the bottom of the research roundup page. She laughed and said “See? Sort of. I’m just the plant waterer.” I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her it was actually a huge deal that belonged on the front page. I just said “You still noticed the aphids. That’s your work, right?” She nodded, and then we spent the next 10 minutes complaining about how her dorm’s cafeteria charges $4 for a bottle of water, and that was that. No big speech, no forced photo for the family Christmas card.
The thing I’ve started doing that works, that any parent or teacher can do tomorrow, is stop leading with my own pride. Instead of opening with “I’m so proud of you!” or “This is amazing!” open with a question that lets them lead: What part of this felt good for you? If they say it’s just a small, sort of win, don’t push them to see it as bigger. Acknowledge it: “That makes sense. It’s still cool that you got that, right?” You don’t have to fix their imposter feelings, or turn every tiny thing into a major milestone. You just have to let them tell you what it means to them.
I also stopped turning small wins into resume fodder. I used to say “That looks great on grad school apps!” or “This will help you get a better job later!” and that just sucked all the joy out of the moment for Lila. She doesn’t care right now that a two-line blurb looks good on a resume. She cared that her prof noticed her, that she did something that actually made a difference to those saplings. Leaving it there, instead of jumping to the next step, lets her enjoy the win right now.
Lila still has bad weeks. Last month, she texted me after failing her first chemistry midterm, saying she was sure she was going to flunk out and everyone was right that she didn’t belong. I didn’t jump in to tell her she was wrong, that she was amazing. I just texted back “That sounds awful. What’s one small thing you can do this week to start working on it?” She said she was going to go to review sessions and office hours, and that was that.
She still downplays most of her achievements, she still calls any unremarkable recognition a “sort of” win. I used to think I needed to fix that, to build her confidence by hyping every little thing up until she believed she was amazing. Now I know confidence grows when you get to celebrate your wins on your own terms, even when they’re small, even when they’re only sort of wins. It doesn’t need to be on the front page of the newsletter to matter.
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