It is game three of a weekend tournament. Ninety-four degrees. Your son went 0-for-4 yesterday and got hit by a pitch in the ribs. He does not want to be at the field. You can see it in how he carries his bag.
Here is the truth nobody tells kids: the feeling is irrelevant. The at-bat has a job, and the job does not change because the hitter is tired or sore or in a bad mood. The kids who figure this out early are the ones still playing at eighteen. The ones waiting to feel good play well about twice a month.
Feelings make a terrible compass because they lie. A kid feels terrible in warmups and goes 3-for-4. He feels locked in during BP and goes 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Ask any college player. The correlation between how you feel and how you perform is basically zero. But kids keep checking the feeling like it is a weather report, and parents keep asking “how are you feeling today,” which accidentally teaches them the feeling matters.
What works is a routine that does not ask permission. The great hitters I have been around run the same pre-at-bat sequence whether they are 4-for-4 or 0-for-4. On deck, they watch the pitcher. Two pitches, minimum. What is he throwing, what is the pattern. In the box, same breath, same eyes, same question: what am I looking for here. The routine carries them on the days the motivation does not show up.
Teach your kid this line: the plan does not care how I feel. Say it enough and it becomes the thing he hears instead of the doubt. It sounds simple because it is simple. Simple is what survives at 94 degrees in game three.
And parents, one adjustment for you. Stop asking how he feels before games. Ask what his plan is. The first question points him inward at the mood. The second points him outward at the job. That small switch, over a season, changes the kind of hitter he becomes.
If your hitter runs hot and cold and you cannot figure out why, my $199 Strategic Hitter evaluation will show you. I map the at-bats and find whether the problem is the plan, the routine, or the space between his ears on the bad days. Book it here