10 Common Mistakes Parents Make With Their Child’s Chess

Over the years I have spent working as a coach, I have seen the same situation many times. A child starts learning chess, they enjoy the game, the first results appear, and along with them comes the parents’ desire to help. This is completely natural. Parents find tournaments, buy books, ask the coach about rating, watch games, and sometimes even start studying chess themselves.

The problem is that at some point there can be too much help.

And almost all the mistakes I want to talk about are made with good intentions. I have rarely met parents who did not care about what was happening with their child. Usually, it is exactly the opposite. They worry, invest time and money, want to see progress, and are afraid of missing something. There is a lot for parents of young chess players to think about, and sometimes it is this desire to speed up the child’s development that creates unnecessary pressure.

I do not think there is some ideal type of “chess parent.” Children are too different. One child likes it when their parents discuss every game with them. Another wants to close the chessboard after a tournament and forget about chess until the next day. One child can handle four tournaments in a row perfectly well, while another is already tired after the second one.

So I would not turn the following ten points into strict rules. I see them more as situations I have observed too often during my years of coaching, and which, in my opinion, are worth noticing before they turn into a real problem.

Mistake #1. Paying Too Much Attention to Results

This is probably the first thing I would mention to parents.

A child comes home from a tournament. What is the first question they hear?

“How many points did you score?”

It is a completely normal question. Of course, I also want to know my students’ results. But if almost every conversation about a tournament begins and ends with the number of points, the child gradually receives a very simple message: a good tournament is one where I won, and a bad tournament is one where I lost.

Chess is a little more complicated than that.

I have seen tournaments where a student gained rating but played quite poorly. Their opponents simply allowed them to win. And I have seen tournaments where a child lost rating, but I liked the quality of their games much more.

Results can be especially misleading for beginners. Today a child may win a piece on move five and win the game. Tomorrow they may hang their own queen. In one tournament they will get opponents who are comfortable for them, and in another much stronger ones. Making serious conclusions after every competition like this seems pointless to me.

I am much more interested in something else. Has the child started thinking longer? Do they notice the opponent’s threats? Are they trying to use what we worked on during lessons? Are they calculating variations better? Are they starting to stop repeating old mistakes?

If the answer is yes, then there is progress. The rating will usually catch up later.

Mistake #2. Comparing Your Child With Other Children

This is probably the easiest mistake to understand.

You come to a tournament and see an eight-year-old boy with an 1800 rating. Your child is nine and has a rating of 1300. An obvious question appears: why?

Then you find out that the other boy started at four, trains several times a week, has already played a hundred tournament games, and basically lives chess. Or perhaps you find out nothing of the sort. Maybe he is simply exceptionally talented.

What does this information change for your child?

In my opinion, almost nothing.

The difference in the speed of development among children can be enormous. One student makes a big jump in a few months. Another stays at almost the same level for a long time and then suddenly starts understanding things that previously seemed impossible for them.

I especially dislike comparisons inside the same training group: “Look, Max can already solve these problems, and you can’t.” To a parent, this may sound like motivation. The child may hear something completely different: Max is good, and I am bad.

I would compare a child mainly with the player they were six months or a year ago.

What positions used to be too difficult for them? What mistakes have disappeared? Can they now explain something they did not understand at all before?

That kind of comparison seems much more useful to me. And, just as importantly, at least it is fair.

Mistake #3. Becoming a Second Coach

I have seen this situation many times.

The child has a coach. After the lesson, they receive homework. Then in the evening Dad sits down next to them and explains how, in his opinion, they should have played. The next day the child watches YouTube, where someone recommends a completely different approach. Then they come to the next lesson and receive a fourth version.

There is a lot of information, but very little clarity.

If the parent is a good chess player, the situation becomes even more interesting. Naturally, they want to help. The child makes a strange move, and it is very difficult to stay silent.

But sometimes I specifically want the student to make that strange move.

I need to see how they think without a hint. If an adult constantly corrects a decision before the child has faced the consequences, it becomes much harder for the coach to understand what the student can actually do on their own.

The child can also develop the habit of looking for an adult’s approval before every decision. “Can I play this?” “Is this a good move?” “What about here?”

I do not like this kind of dependence at all.

A parent does not need to be good at chess to help their child enormously. Take an interest in the lessons, drive them to tournaments, create good conditions for training, support them after a loss, sometimes play together just for fun. That is already a lot.

I would leave the explanation of the Sicilian Defense to the coach.

Mistake #4. Analyzing a Loss While the Child Is Still Upset

Imagine an ordinary tournament. A child has played for four hours, had a winning position, made a mistake, and lost.

They walk out of the playing hall. And immediately hear:

“Why didn’t you play the rook?”

Maybe the rook move really was correct. But at this particular moment, it does not matter very much.

I generally consider the moment immediately after a painful loss to be one of the worst times for a serious chess conversation.

Adults are not always capable of calmly analyzing their own mistakes thirty seconds after something goes wrong. Why do we expect this from an eight-year-old child?

Sometimes they need ten minutes. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes it is better to analyze the game tomorrow.

I would first look at the child. If they run out of the playing hall excited and say, “Dad, you won’t believe the combination I had here!”, great, you can look at the game. If they are angry, silent, and do not want to see a chessboard, I do not see much value in immediate analysis.

The game is not going anywhere.

And the emotion a child associates with chess is sometimes more important to me than whether we find the mistake this evening or tomorrow morning.

Mistake #5. Correcting Every Mistake

Some parents find it physically difficult to watch their child make a mistake.

The child is about to put a knight under attack. The adult already sees it and says, “Think again.”

The child thinks and makes another move.

It looks like we helped them. But what exactly did they learn?

They did not see why the first move was bad. They simply understood that the adult did not like it.

I prefer students not to be afraid of mistakes during lessons. Sometimes a bad move gives me excellent material for an explanation. Hung your queen? Fine. Now the consequences are impossible not to notice.

If everything is corrected in advance, chess turns into a strange game where the child is trying to guess the answer the adult wants.

I want something different. Let them make decisions themselves, sometimes make mistakes, see the result, and gradually learn to check their own ideas.

Of course, there are exceptions. If we are specifically training a certain skill, I may stop a student and ask them to think again. But I certainly would not do this after every inaccurate move.

Independence in chess does not appear when a child stops making mistakes. It appears when they become used to being responsible for their own decisions.

Mistake #6. Giving Your Child Too Much Chess

If two lessons a week are useful, then four must be even more useful, right?

Not necessarily.

This is one of those ideas I am quite careful about. Parents see that their child is interested and try to make the most of the moment. They add private lessons, group lessons, puzzles, online tournaments, regular tournaments. After a while, chess takes up almost every free evening. Even a good chess training plan should leave a child enough time away from chess.

Some children handle this perfectly well. In fact, it is not enough for them, and they ask for more.

But that is the important part: they ask for it themselves.

If a child studies chess after school because they have been looking forward to it all day, I do not see a problem. If they study because the schedule says “Chess, 6:00 to 7:30 PM,” while what they really want is to go outside and play, I would start thinking about it.

Tiredness does not always look like a direct “I don’t want to play anymore.” Sometimes the child becomes lazy during lessons, starts rushing through exercises, or gets angry after mistakes. Parents think the child has become less disciplined, and in response they add even more control.

Maybe the child simply needs a little rest.

In children’s chess, I much prefer steady interest over several years to incredible intensity for six months.

Mistake #7. Taking Rating Too Seriously

Chess Rating is convenient. That is exactly what makes it dangerous.

It was 1250, now it is 1320. So there is progress. It dropped to 1190. Something must be going wrong.

If it were that simple, coaching would be much easier.

A child’s rating can move very quickly. They start playing more tournaments, the level of their opponents changes, they gain experience, and sometimes the rating system itself changes. And, of course, the quality of their chess changes too. But not every movement in the number tells us something important.

I especially dislike it when rating starts affecting the mood of the whole family.

Plus 40 points, everyone is happy. Minus 50, and the investigation begins.

“What happened?”

“Maybe we need another coach?”

“Why has there been no improvement for three months?”

Three months is a very short period in chess.

Sometimes a student is learning more difficult things, starts playing positions they do not understand as well yet, and their results may even temporarily get worse. Sometimes it was simply a bad tournament. That happens to grandmasters too.

Rating matters. I am not suggesting that parents ignore it. But I would treat it as one indicator among many, not as a weekly grade for the quality of the child’s work.

Mistake #8. Making Conclusions About Talent Too Early

“Do you think my child is talented?”

I have been asked this question many times.

I understand why parents want an answer. If a child is clearly talented, perhaps it makes sense to take chess more seriously. If not, why invest so much time?

The problem is that at six or seven years old, I would be very careful with predictions like this.

Of course, some things are noticeable. One child remembers positions very quickly. Another calculates variations surprisingly well. A third understands an idea after one explanation that usually needs to be repeated several times. As a coach, I find these things interesting.

But I have also seen children who did not stand out at all in the beginning and then improved enormously.

There is another thing parents sometimes underestimate: the nature of the child’s interest.

A child may not be the fastest in the group, but they can play for hours on their own, ask questions, and return to games they lost. In my experience, this kind of interest often matters much more when you are trying to help a child improve at chess. A few years later, this habit may turn out to be much more important than who solved puzzles fastest at the age of seven.

So I would not rush to label a child as “talented” or “not talented.”

And I certainly would not want the child to start seeing themselves through that label.

Mistake #9. Changing Coaches After Every Period of Poor Results

I should say right away that sometimes a coach really does need to be changed.

If the child is not interested, there is no connection, the lessons do not match their level, the coach does not analyze games, or for months cannot explain to the parents what they are actually working on, then the questions are completely reasonable.

But one bad tournament, by itself, is not proof of bad coaching to me.

There are periods in chess when results stay in the same place. Sometimes there is even a decline. The child has grown out of old habits, but new ones have not formed yet. They have started playing stronger opponents. They are trying to use new openings. Or perhaps they simply played several bad games in a row.

If you change the entire training system every time this happens, another problem appears. A new coach comes with a different view, changes the openings, and suggests a different program. Three months later there is still no result, so a third coach appears.

In the end, nobody has enough time to build systematic work.

I would talk to the coach first. What do they see? What is the problem? What is the child working on right now? How do they evaluate the recent games? What are they planning to do next?

If the answers make sense and the child enjoys the lessons, I would not panic because of a few unsuccessful tournaments.

And if the coach really is not a good fit, choosing the right chess coach becomes important, but you can usually see that in more than just the rating.

Mistake #10. Making Chess Your Project Instead of Your Child’s

For me, this is the most important mistake of all ten.

At some point, the line can become almost invisible.

At first, the child simply enjoys playing. Then come the lessons. The first trophy. A rating. Parents start reading chess forums, choosing tournaments, planning schedules, calculating the ratings of future opponents.

And one day it turns out that the adults are thinking about the child’s chess career more than the child is.

I think it is useful to occasionally ask a very simple question:

Does the child still want this?

Not whether they wanted it two years ago. Not whether they should want it because they have ability. Do they want it now?

Maybe the answer is yes. Some children really are incredibly passionate about chess. They ask for an extra lesson themselves, want to travel to tournaments, and get upset if they have not played for a week. If the family is ready to support that interest, great.

But if all the energy is coming from the parents, I would be careful.

Chess can give a child a great deal even if they never become a master. They can study seriously for several years, learn to think, compete, win and lose, make friends, and then choose something else.

I do not consider that a failure.

What seems much worse to me is when a child continues only because they are afraid of disappointing their parents. At that point, even good results do not change very much.

After all, it is the child who sits at the board. They think about the move, they lose the game, they experience the defeat, and they spend hours training.

So the desire to continue should primarily remain their own.

So What Should Parents Do?

After everything I have written, it may sound as though the best parent in children’s chess is one who does nothing at all. That is certainly not what I mean.

On the contrary, the parents’ role is enormous.

A child can rarely find a coach on their own, register for a tournament, organize a schedule, or understand how many lessons they need. And after a difficult loss, support from the family often means much more than anything the coach can say.

Support and management, however, are not quite the same thing.

I like it when parents are interested in their child’s chess but still leave them some space. You can ask after a game, “Do you want to tell me how you played?” instead of immediately asking, “Did you win?” You can be happy about a good game even after a loss. You can notice that the child is tired. You can discuss problems with the coach without making the child feel as if they are constantly the subject of a meeting between adults.

And you certainly do not need to understand chess at a high level yourself.

I have worked with wonderful chess parents who barely knew how the pieces moved. They simply understood their own child very well.

Sometimes I think that is enough.

A Few Final Thoughts

When I look at successful young chess players, I do not always see parents behind them who controlled every training session. Much more often, I see adults who knew when to help and when to step aside.

It is not an easy balance.

Of course, parents will make mistakes. Coaches make mistakes too. I am sure I have made decisions with students that, looking back, I would handle differently today. There is nothing unusual about that.

So I would not turn this article into another list of things parents are “not allowed” to do.

If you occasionally asked your child about their rating, nothing terrible happened. If you suggested a move after a game, you have not ruined their chess development. If you once insisted on a lesson when your child did not feel like studying, it does not mean you are putting terrible pressure on them.

I think the overall atmosphere around chess matters much more.

Does the child feel that a loss is something they can get through? Can they make a mistake without being afraid of the adults’ reaction? Are they allowed to get tired of chess sometimes? Do they look forward to the next tournament? Do they want to come to the next lesson?

If the answers are mostly yes, I would not worry too much about individual mistakes parents make.

In the end, my job as a coach is not only to teach a child to play better chess. I would also like them to still love chess several years from now. And parents can help with that much more than they sometimes realize.

♟ Article prepared by Grandmaster and chess coach Valery Filippov ♟

📖 Continue Improving Your Chess:

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FAQ

1. Should I ask my child if they won after every chess game?

You can, of course, but I would not make it the first question every time. I prefer something like, “How did you play?” or “Was it an interesting game?” Sometimes a child loses but plays one of their best games of the tournament. I would not want that game to suddenly feel unimportant just because the result was 0 instead of 1.

2. Should parents analyze chess games with their child?

Sometimes, yes, especially if the child wants to show you the game. But I would be careful about turning every car ride home from a tournament into an analysis session. If your child has a coach, serious analysis can usually wait. Immediately after a painful loss, they may need a parent much more than another chess teacher.

3. What should I say when my child loses a chess game?

There is no perfect phrase. I would first look at the child. Some children want to talk immediately, others do not. You do not always need to explain why losing is useful or give a motivational speech. Sometimes “That was a tough game” is quite enough.

4. Should I correct my child when I see them making a bad move?

Not every time. If you constantly say “Think again” just before a mistake, the child may become very good at reading your reaction instead of reading the chessboard. Making a bad move and seeing what happens afterwards can sometimes teach much more than a hint.

5. How much should parents care about their child’s chess rating?

Rating matters, but I would not watch every ten or twenty points. With children, ratings can move very quickly in both directions. I am usually more interested in whether the quality of the games is improving. If that is happening, I would give the rating some time.