Rejection is an emotional experience, no matter how old you are, and we all must learn how to both deal with disappointment. For parents, rejection can be incredibly difficult to navigate with your child. Here’s some tips to help you help your child cope with academic and social disappointment.
How to handle disappointment with your child
Disappointment is never fun. No one wants to feel rejected, and it can bring up feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. When your child doesn’t make the team, isn’t admitted to a gifted program, or isn’t cast for the school play, it stings. Here’s how to help your child cope:
Don’t try to fix or change the outcome
If your child has received a rejection, especially if it’s from something they’ve been anticipating – like a gifted kindergarten program or their top-choice college – don’t try to fix it. While it can be tempted to rush to your child’s aid, you may actually cause more harm than good.
Often, the decision is already set in stone, and bombarding the school with constant emails and phone calls is unlikely to change the outcome. As much as you may want to, you can’t fix everything for your child. The earlier they learn this, the more opportunities they’ll have to practice independence.
Teach your child self-regulation strategies
Rejection is hard, but it’s also a great opportunity to teach your child how to practice self-care. Think about what you do when you’re upset or disappointed. Do you call a friend? Go for a run? Listen to your favorite music? Ask your child what might help them feel better, and if they don’t know, offer ideas. You can work with your child to practice deep breathing, drawing, or going for a walk. Emphasize that these strategies will always be there for them when they experience setbacks. Helping your child develop these self-care strategies at an early age will continue to serve them throughout life.
Reaffirm your child’s strengths
Your child’s self-confidence may be shaken after experiencing rejection. This is normal, so don’t brush it under the rug. Take some time to remind your child of where their strengths lie. They may not have gotten into their top choice school, but they may still have gotten into other schools. Even if they were rejected from all schools, they still have strengths to offer, academic and otherwise and will need reminders of this.
When you’re offering this encouragement, take care to be specific. Reference something your child has done well recently, or a skill they’ve actively worked to improve. The goal isn’t to blindly praise them, but to provide targeted feedback that will help build their confidence.
Create a learning experience – but not right away.
In the long run, rejection can be an effective teaching tool, but it’s not one you want to wield on the day of the rejection. Allow your child to take time to feel disappointed first. After the initial frustration has passed, you can then begin pulling lessons from the experience.
Maybe your child didn’t put in as much preparation as you would have liked for an entrance exam. Or perhaps they fell back on bad habits and breezed through an application without fully reading it. Maybe there are areas where they tried their best, but they simply need more practice. Rejection offers information you can use to improve. This not only allows your child to grow from the experience, but they’ll become more resilient over time and no longer look at failure as something that is inherently bad.
