Turns Out My Kids Didn’t Need My Panic Attack
Intro (Yep, This One's Different)
There’s a lot I’ll forget about this tournament weekend.
The two-hour drive. The bracket chaos. The group chats that multiplied like rabbits. The hotel waffle iron that clearly had a personal vendetta. The snacks. So many goddamn snacks.
But that last inning? That one’s burned into my skull. Forever.
Not because we won…we didn’t. It was ugly until that last inning.
We got steamrolled 20–5 by a team of man-children that probably shave twice a day and filed for taxes this spring.
But in the last inning, the baseball Gods looked favorably upon us and blessed rewarded the kids for their hard work…when every fact and reason said we should’ve folded and gone quietly…my kids rallied.
Ten hitters came up. Five scored.
Clean contact. Smart baserunning. Zero fear.
Just pure grit and joy from a bunch of undersized 8-year-olds who decided they weren’t done yet.
And here’s what gave me chills:
Three other teams were standing at the fence cheering for us.
Because that shit was contagious.
Because when a team keeps swinging after getting punched in the mouth the entire game, people notice.
I want that inning to live in infamy.
Not because I’m being sentimental, because I’m fucking proud.
Because those kids showed more fight, joy, and heart in 15 minutes than most adults show in a week.
And because they reminded me who the fuck I’m really doing this for.
This blog’s different.
Less therapist. More coach-dad-human-in-a-parking-lot-having-a-quiet-breakdown.
But still 100% me. Still about stress. Still about the nervous system.
Still about how we wreck ourselves trying to control what hasn’t even happened…
…while the kids are just excited to hit, swim, and go crush arcade games like they’re supposed to.
So yeah.
We got smoked.
But we swung back.
Their dugout turned to chaos. Their players came unglued and reminded us they’re 8yo.
And this?
This is the story I never want to forget.
The Night Before the Game (AKA My Emotional Breakdown in a CT Parking Lot)
It’s the night before our first game.
We haven’t played a single pitch.
And there I am, pacing a Connecticut parking lot at 1:30 a.m., looking like a lunatic, stress-eating peanut M&Ms and running through every worst-case scenario my overactive dad-brain could conjure.
Would they freeze?
Would they feel embarrassed?
Would they come apart if we got rocked?
Would I come apart watching them come apart?
Would I forget the team binder and ruin everything and have to move out of state?
My brain was like:
“Hey, remember that one time you blew it? And the 37 others? Great. Let’s review the entire playlist right now instead of sleeping like a normal person.”
Meanwhile, the kids?
Out cold.
Sleeping like angels who’ve never once questioned their own existence or felt the gut-punch of a botched relay throw.
Plot Twist: We Got Our Asses Kicked—And It Was Glorious
Fast-forward to the game. We lost.
20 to fucking 5.
Yes, you read that right.
TWENTY. TO. FIVE.
But something amazing happened. In the final inning—down by a mile, outmatched, out-sized, out-aged—our kids rallied.
Five runs. Pure heart. Full send. No fear.
They came off that field like we’d just won the whole damn tournament.
Smiling. Yelling. Laughing. Proud as hell.
And that single inning? It made the entire goddamn trip worth it.
If you had told me that the night before, while I was losing my grip in the parking lot, I would’ve told you to shut the fuck up and stop lying to me.
They Did Exactly What I Expected… and It Was Perfect
Because here’s the thing:
My kids?
They did exactly what I expected them to do—based on their age, experience, and where they’re at developmentally.
This wasn’t some feel-good neighborhood scrimmage.
These tournaments are loaded with talent from monster leagues—400, 500, even 700 kids deep.
Every roster we faced? It looked like someone duplicated all my best players and slapped them in different uniforms.
We showed up from a league with maybe 100 kids total, rolling out a gritty, tight-knit squad still figuring it all out.
It was like leading lambs to slaughter—
...except these lambs came swinging.
Our pregame talk wasn’t some inspirational movie speech.
It was real. Honest.
“You’re not supposed to win this game. And that’s exactly why your job is to be the biggest pain in the ass they’ve seen all tournament. Make them work. Make them sweat. Make them earn it.”
And they did.
The first two innings?
Only six kids even got to bat.
The last inning?
Ten batters. Five runs. Absolute chaos.
Clean hits. Disciplined approaches. Smart baserunning. Grit.
They became every coach’s nightmare—relentless, unpredictable, and impossible to shut down.
Glorious little baseball gremlins.
And that inning? That relentless, annoying, perfect inning?
That was everything.
Not because of the scoreboard.
Because they showed up when it counted.
Because they refused to roll over.
And because sometimes, the win isn’t in the trophy—it’s in knowing you made the other team’s dugout squirm for a minute.
How Stress Steals the Moment
And while I was overthinking every possible outcome like a lunatic, you know what the kids were excited about?
Swimming after the game.
And going to the fucking arcade.
Because they’re kids.
And they’re doing exactly what kids are supposed to do.
Meanwhile, I was in a parking lot conducting a full-blown stress autopsy on something that hadn’t even happened yet.
That’s what stress does.
It steals joy from the present and tries to replace it with control over the future.
It doesn’t work. It never works.
All it does is rob you of the moment that’s right in front of you.
And that moment? That inning? That trip to the pool and the arcade after a 20–5 ass-kicking?
That was joy. That was presence. That was enough.
Stress Doesn’t Change Tomorrow. It Just Wrecks Tonight.
Here’s the punchline:
All that worrying I did? Useless.
It didn’t make me a better coach.
It didn’t change the game.
It just made me more irritable, more fried, and more likely to scream at a waffle iron that clearly had a personal vendetta.
And this is what I tell my patients all the time:
Worrying doesn’t fix anything.
It just steals your bandwidth.
And if you’re doing it at the expense of sleep? You’re playing tomorrow on hard mode.
Let’s Talk About Kids and Sleep, Too
Now here’s where it really hits: the kids slept. And they played their hearts out.
That’s not a coincidence.
Sleep isn’t just about “rest.” It’s how their bodies recover and how their brains lock in the skills we teach them at practice.
The research says:
Kids need 9–11 hours of sleep a night (Paruthi et al., 2016).
Sleep improves motor learning, decision-making, mood regulation, and resilience (Beattie et al., 2015; Dewald et al., 2010).
Without it? They’re emotionally volatile and mentally foggy—aka not ready to compete (Lo et al., 2016).
So if you're dragging your kid to every clinic, private lesson, and tournament, but letting them stay up until 11 playing Roblox or watching YouTube—you’re burning gas with no oil.
Sleep is the glue that holds it all together.
They slept. I didn’t.
They showed up. I spiraled.
Let’s Get Nerdy for a Second (Because My Rants Are Peer-Reviewed)
Here’s what sleep deprivation actually does to your brain:
Your prefrontal cortex (rational thinking, patience, big-picture vision) goes offline.
Your amygdala (emotional chaos button) takes over.
Your coordination? Toast.
Your judgment? Laughable.
And worst of all? You think you’re fine. You're not. Science agrees.
Research Receipts:
Yoo et al. (2007) – Sleep deprivation disconnects emotion regulation systems.
Van Dongen et al. (2003) – Partial sleep loss tanks reaction time and decision-making.
Banks & Dinges (2007) – People running on no sleep routinely overestimate their performance.
Paruthi et al. (2016) – Kids aged 6–13 need 9–11 hours of sleep.
Beattie et al. (2015) – Sleep boosts skill acquisition in athletes.
Dewald et al. (2010) – Poor sleep = poor attention and emotion regulation in teens.
Lo et al. (2016) – Less sleep = more mood swings and bad decisions. Shocking, right?
Final Thought: Go the Fuck to Sleep
The kids were fine. Actually, they were better than fine.
They had fun. They rallied. They showed up with heart and grit and everything you want out of a team.
And I?
I was a sleep-deprived therapist-coach-dad hybrid threatening to fistfight a continental breakfast.
So if you take nothing else from this long, emotionally fueled recap:
Go the fuck to sleep.
Seriously.
Worry won’t change the game.
Sleep might.
And when your nervous system is shot, your perspective follows.
You don’t need more control.
You need more rest.
-Matt
References
Banks, S., & Dinges, D. F. (2007). Behavioral and physiological consequences of sleep restriction. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 3(5), 519–528.
Beattie, Z. T., Hagen, C. C., Hayes, T. L., & Powers, D. (2015). Sleep quality and motor skill learning in healthy older adults. Experimental Brain Research, 233(8), 2391–2401.
Dewald, J. F., Meijer, A. M., Oort, F. J., Kerkhof, G. A., & Bögels, S. M. (2010). The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 14(3), 179–189.
Lo, J. C., Ong, J. L., Leong, R. L., Gooley, J. J., & Chee, M. W. (2016). Cognitive performance, sleepiness, and mood in partially sleep deprived adolescents: The need for sleep study. Sleep, 39(3), 687–698.
Paruthi, S., Brooks, L. J., D'Ambrosio, C., Hall, W. A., Kotagal, S., Lloyd, R. M., ... & Wise, M. S. (2016). Consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine on the recommended amount of sleep for healthy children: Methodology and discussion. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 12(11), 1549–1561.
Van Dongen, H. P., Maislin, G., Mullington, J. M., & Dinges, D. F. (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: Dose–response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep, 26(2), 117–126.
Yoo, S. S., Gujar, N., Hu, P., Jolesz, F. A., & Walker, M. P. (2007). The human emotional brain without sleep—A prefrontal amygdala disconnect. Current Biology, 17(20), R877–R878.