Why Chasing Ranks Isn’t Winning At Life: Parenting Tips For Raising Kids Who Thrive
The folding chairs stuck to my bare calves through my linen shorts, and the field lights turned every bug in the air into a tiny glowing streak. Milo was leaning against my hip, twisting the drawstring on his hoodie, waiting for the coach to get through the team awards to the end-of-season individual rankings. When the coach called 12th place, my 10-year-old stood up, walked over to get his crumpled certificate, and came right back to sit down, face blank, no smile for the camera his coach pulled out.
On the drive home, he stared out the window at the strip mall lights until we pulled into the ice cream shop parking lot, then blurted that he wanted to quit soccer. “What’s the point of being 12th?” he said. “No one remembers anyone past the top 5.” I almost opened my mouth to say what I’d been taught to say: that he just had to work harder and move up next season. But I stopped, because I’d picked him up from practice the previous Tuesday, and he wasn’t done when everyone else left. He’d stayed on the field, walking an 8-year-old new kid through how to trap a low ball, because the kid’s mom was stuck in traffic and couldn’t leave work early. That win didn’t have a rank attached to it, but it mattered more than any top 5 spot I could think of.
I ordered his mint chocolate chip and we sat on the hood of the car eating it, and I told him that. “Jax scored his first ever goal on Saturday,” I said. “That wouldn’t have happened if you’d bailed early to get home for snacks. That’s a win no one puts a number on.”
I’ve been turning this over a lot lately, because every part of kid life now feels like it’s turned into a rank. Test percentiles, class ranks, club sports placements, even how many likes your kid’s Reel gets gets sorted into an unspoken hierarchy. I grew up chasing class rank myself. I graduated top 10% of my high school, checked that box, got into the college I wanted, and burned out so bad first semester I couldn’t get out of bed for three days. I’d spent so much energy chasing the next higher rank that I never learned what I cared about beyond being first. When the ranking stopped, I had no idea what to do next.
After that soccer awards night, I made a few small changes to how we do things at home, nothing big or fancy. The first was swapping out what we ask at dinner. We used to lead with “What grade did you get on your test?” and “How did your team place in the tournament?” Now we ask three specific questions every week: What’s something small that went wrong that you fixed on your own? Who did you help with something this week? What’s something you did just for fun, even if you weren’t the best at it? It takes 2 extra minutes, and it shifts the whole conversation away from numbers.
The second small change was stopping myself from leading with ranks or titles when we talk about people. My uncle is a partner at a big law firm, but when I talk about him to Milo, I don’t lead with that. I start with the fact that he volunteers at the local animal shelter every weekend and just fostered three more kittens last month. The retired custodian down the street? I don’t say he used to clean the middle school, I say he remembers every kid’s birthday on our block and leaves lollipops on the porch. It’s a tiny shift in how you talk, but it rewrites what success looks like for a kid before they even realize it.
A few weeks ago, I was waiting for a parent-teacher conference and sat next to a mom crying about her 11th grade daughter. The girl got a 3 on her AP Art test instead of a 5, and now she’s convinced she can’t get into a good art program. She hasn’t picked up a sketchbook for fun in three weeks, because all her free time goes to re-taking the test prep classes. That’s the problem with chasing rank above all else: you end up giving up the thing you love just to get a better number next to your name.
I’ve learned a specific phrase to use when Milo comes home upset about a bad rank, instead of automatically telling him he’ll do better next time (which just reinforces that rank is the whole point). I ask: “What’s one thing you learned doing this that you didn’t know before?” Last month, he came home moping about getting 8th in his class on a curved science test. He thought for a minute after I asked, and said he learned he needs to write down his steps instead of doing them in his head to avoid silly mistakes. That’s a lesson that will serve him far better than a 1st place rank on that one test would have.
It’s not like we never talk about ranks at all. If Milo wants to put in extra work to move up a spot, that’s fine, I don’t tell him he shouldn’t care. We just don’t let the rank be the whole story. I still mess up sometimes, too. I’ll catch myself asking “what place did you get?” before I remember to ask what he enjoyed, and Milo will roll his eyes at me and remind me of our dinner questions.
Last week, after he finished moping about that science test, he dragged his lopsided model rocket out to the backyard. He’d been gluing it together for three weeks, and the fins are crooked because he cut them himself. He set it off, it went 20 feet up, spun sideways, and crashed straight into my rose bush. He laughed so hard he snort-laughed, then wiped the dirt off it and said, “Even if it’s not the best, it still flew, right?” That’s the win I care about. We’re still getting it wrong half the time, but we’re not chasing a number. We’re learning how to win at the whole thing.
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