Hello kind grown-up,
There is a particular instinct many of us have when our children are disappointed: fix it, fast.
“We can do something else instead!”
“Don’t be sad, look — we’ll do it another day!”
“It’s not that bad, there’s no need to cry.”
These responses come from love. We hate seeing our children hurt, and we want to make it stop.
But disappointment, like all uncomfortable feelings, needs space before it needs solving.
When we rush to fix or minimise a child’s disappointment, we inadvertently teach them that the feeling itself is a problem to be removed quickly, rather than something to be felt, understood, and moved through.
What actually helps:
Validate the size of the feeling, not the size of the event.
A cancelled picnic might seem small to an adult who has weathered far bigger losses. But to a child who has been looking forward to something for two weeks, the disappointment is genuinely large. Try: “You were so excited for this. It makes sense that you’re really disappointed.”
Resist the urge to immediately offer an alternative.
Let the disappointment exist for a few minutes before problem-solving. “This is hard” needs to come before “here’s what we can do instead.”
Allow both things to be true.
A new plan can be made and the original disappointment can still be acknowledged. “We can do the picnic another day. And it’s okay that today still feels sad.”
Sit with them rather than talk them out of it.
Sometimes the most helpful thing is simply presence, staying nearby while the feeling passes, without needing to say very much at all.
Children who learn that disappointment is survivable, that it can be felt fully and still pass, build genuine resilience.
Children who learn that disappointment must be fixed immediately learn instead that big feelings are intolerable, and start looking for ways to avoid them altogether.
With warmth,
Lenny 🦁
