The trying is yours. The score isn't.

Picture a soccer ball sitting on the grass. You run up to it. You swing your leg back. Then, thump! You kick it as hard as you can. The ball flies toward the goal.

Now here's my question. While the ball is still on your foot, who is in charge of it? You are. You picked how hard to kick. You picked where to aim. You picked how many times you practised before today. All of that is yours.

But the moment the ball leaves your foot, everything changes. The wind might push it sideways. It might hit a bump in the grass and hop the wrong way. The goalie guards the goal, and she might leap up and catch it with one hand. A dog might run onto the field and steal it. Dogs think every game is for them. Then a big board at the end of the field shows the score. That board is the scoreboard.

So every kick has two parts. There's the kick, and there's the score. The kick is yours. The score isn't.

That's a secret, and lots of grown-ups still haven't figured it out. Here it is in small words. Do your best, and let the score go.

It works the same way off the soccer field. Say you have a spelling test. You can practise your words every night. That part is yours. But you can't pick which words your teacher puts on the test. Maybe it's the one word you always mix up. That part isn't yours.

Or say you're playing a board game with dice. You shake them and roll a one. Then another one. Then another one! You can't pick the dice. But you can pick your move. You can also pick whether to tip the whole board over. Please don't tip the board over. The little pieces go everywhere, and one always ends up under the couch.

Or say there's a race at recess. You can run your very fastest. But another kid might have longer legs. Or springs in their shoes. Or they might be part cheetah. You can't do anything about that. You can only run your own race, as fast as your legs will go.

Have you ever watched grown-ups watching a game on TV? They shout at it. "Kick it! Run! No, the other way!" The players can't hear them. The players are very far away, inside the TV. But the grown-ups shout anyway, like the TV is a walkie-talkie. That's what it looks like when you try to hold a score that isn't yours.

What's something you tried really hard at, even when the score didn't go your way?

When the score goes wrong, your grumpy horse wakes up. It wants to stomp and yell. It might want to kick the scoreboard. That never helps. It just hurts your toe. Your scared horse whispers, "You're bad at this. Let's quit." But the score doesn't get to tell you who you are. The score only tells you about one kick, on one day.

Here's a grown-up secret. I forget this too. When a game doesn't go my way, my grumpy horse gets loud. Sometimes I even blame the dice. The dice never say sorry. Then I take a breath, and I let the score go.

Letting the score go doesn't mean you don't care about winning. Try to win! Run hard, aim carefully, and cheer when the ball goes in. Winning is fun. And it doesn't mean you can stop trying because "the score doesn't matter anyway." The trying is the part that's yours. So that's the part to do with your whole heart.

You've already met the young man from the chariot story. He was the best archer in the whole land. On the morning of the big battle, he sat down. He said, "I can't do this." He was scared of lots of things that day. One of them was this. "What if it goes wrong? What if I lose?"

His friend, the driver, sat down next to him. He said, "Your bow is yours. How hard you pull is yours. How carefully you aim is yours. But where it all ends up isn't yours to hold."

The young man frowned. "Then why even try?"

His friend smiled. "Because the trying is the part that's yours. Do your part with your whole heart. Don't do it just for the prize. And don't sit down and do nothing, either. Then let the rest go."

The young man thought about that for a long time. Slowly, his shoulders felt lighter. He didn't have to carry the whole battle on his back. He only had to carry his own bow. And a bow is much lighter than a battle.

That's what I want for you. After a race or a test or a game, I don't want "Did you win?" to be my first question. I want to ask, "Did you give it everything?" Because that's the part that belongs to you. The score belongs to the wind and the dice. It belongs to the goalie, and sometimes the dog.

So the next time you line up a kick, give it everything you've got. Aim carefully. Swing your leg back. Then, when the ball leaves your foot, let it go. Whatever the scoreboard says, you did your part. And your part is the part that counts.

The trying is yours. The score isn't.

After reading

At dinner or bedtime, ask him: "What's one thing you tried hard at today, whatever the score?" Answer it yourself first if he's slow to start, with something small and true, like "I tried hard to fix the broken drawer. It's still a bit stuck, but I gave it my best go." If he's stuck, help him: "What about when you practised your letters?" For the rest of the week, after a game, a test or a race, ask "Did you give it everything?" before you ask anything about winning. When the score goes against either of you, say the kid line together: "Do your best, let the score go."

What to watch for

The goal: after a loss or a bad score, he can say what he did well and keep going, without quitting or blaming.

• It's landing when he talks about his effort first ("I ran really fast") before the result.
• It's landing when he loses a game and asks to play again instead of storming off.
• It's landing when he says "let the score go" to you after you lose.
• Careful: if he uses it to stop trying ("the score doesn't matter, so who cares"), say it kindly: the score isn't his, but the trying is, and that's the part he owes his whole heart.
• Careful: don't say it in the first hot minute after a loss. Let him be disappointed first. Disappointment means he cared.