Why children need to sit with their sadness

Don’t rush to soothe your child when they experience disappointment or a setback. Working through those emotions will teach them how to cope better next time

Down time: Feeling low is a part of life, so parents should resist the urge to cheer up their children straightaway. Picture: iStock

Your child didn’t get a place on the team, or the teacher they’d hoped for, or an invitation to the friend’s birthday party they were expecting. You see their disappointment, their dejection, and you feel helpless.

How can you help them? And how can you prepare them for the inevitability of things not always working out?

Three experts give their recommendations:

Manage expectations

Flag in advance that things may not work out the way they hope, says Linda Breathnach, psychotherapist and member of the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Let your child dream and imagine it working out — “you don’t want to dampen that” — but gently balance it with the possibility of it not.

Breathnach urges parents to wait until their child is able to reflect, before asking, ‘What would you do differently next time?’

“So, you’d say, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if you got it? But with 10 people going for it, you mightn’t this time’.”

Emphasise the child’s previous achievement, Breathnach says, and frame their current ambition, or try-out — for example, an audition or a place on the team — as worthwhile experience. Tell them: ‘You’re amazing and I’m so proud you got this far and enjoy [trying for it], and no matter what, it’ll be great practice for the next one’.

Be curious about your own feelings of disappointment

“If, for you as a parent, disappointment is a tricky feeling to sit with or accept, it will be harder for you to support your child around things not working out,” says child and adolescent psychotherapist Cathy O’Donoghue (theswallowstrail.com).

Child and adolescent psychotherapist Cathy O’Donoghue: 'Adults can rush to do, rather than be with the feeling'

If parents’ own feelings of hurt and disappointment are painful for them, their children’s disappointment will be uncomfortable for them, too,

O’Donoghue says. “So, a lot of parents want to take it away from their child, put positives in: ‘We can do this instead’, or ‘I will bring you to x’. This bypasses the child’s feelings and won’t stop the feeling from being felt.”

Examine the impact on you

Before parents even begin looking at what this disappointment means for their child, they need to answer the question: What is it like for me, as parent?

Consultant clinical psychologist Dr Claire Hayes says: “First, deal with your own reaction. Maybe upset, disappointment, anger, or maybe relief, because you thought what your child was hoping for was too much for them anyway. Ask yourself if the impact on you, as a parent, is because this was your dream, rather than your child’s, or because you think your child will be devastated.”

“Rather than rushing to reassure, do a bit of investigative work,” says Dr Claire Hayes.

Breathnach agrees that we need to first shine a light on our own reaction. “Knowing what it brings up for us can stop it getting in the way of supporting our child.”

Simply be with your child

“Adults can rush to do, rather than be with the feeling,” says O’Donoghue, who urges parents to know that they can just be with what their child is feeling.

That is what the child needs.

“Trying to fix things — or take the feeling away — amplifies what the child is feeling. Whereas, sitting with your child in that feeling — ‘You must be so disappointed you’re not going to the same school as your friend’ — validates it for them. Kids need to feel the feeling all the way through to get to the other side of it.”

Offer support

Normalise the feelings, says Breathnach. “All the stages of grief can happen if things don’t work out for a child. It’s normal to feel disappointment, anger, sadness, bargaining — ‘If I’d practised more’. There’s a risk they might beat themselves up. It’s important for parents to ensure they don’t collude with any critical thinking.”

Breathnach urges parents to wait until their child is able to reflect, before asking, ‘What would you do differently next time?’

She believes in always keeping a ‘big picture’ perspective. Say: ‘When you win the big final someday, you’ll be looking back at this disappointment and it’ll just be a story’.

Explore with the young person the impact of this setback on them

“Rather than rushing to reassure, do a bit of investigative work,” says Hayes.

“Give the young person space to say what it is they find upsetting about this. Ask, ‘What is the hardest piece for you around this?’”

Retell a story that reminds them of their past resilience

“Remind your child of other times when things didn’t go to plan and they had to pivot or try another approach and how life is always throwing curveballs at us and that this is a real test of our inner resources,” says O’Donoghue.

But the child should only be reminded of the grit and flexibility that enabled them to come through a previous disappointment after the first steps of ‘being with the feeling’ and ‘resisting the urge to fix’. “Because you can’t do the logic without first soothing the emotion.”

Give space and trust them

Breathnach says it can be hard for parents to see their child working through difficult feelings, like disappointment, hurt, or rejection. “We might feel tempted to tell them to look on the bright side, or tell a comparative story about someone who went through something similar, even try to minimise it — anything to avoid the pain.”

She urges parents to trust the process and trust their child. “Trust that they will get through it, they will be OK. Trust they are resourceful and can come up with a plan B. Walk alongside them, rather than doing it for them.”

By trusting your child to work through their feelings, Breathnach says you’re allowing life-training. “You’re giving your child space to build resilience and resourcefulness.”

Remember your ABCs

Hayes recommends the ABC ‘coping sentence’ as a roadmap through disappointment:

A is acknowledging the feeling: ‘I feel disappointed, upset, let down’.

B is ‘because’: ‘I didn’t get what I’d hoped for’, or ‘people didn’t recognise my talent’.

C is ‘choose’: ‘But I choose to learn from this’, or ‘I choose to remember I am stronger than my feelings of disappointment’.

Be aware of how you react when disappointed

“The biggest obstacle is that feelings of disappointment are hard to hold,” says O’Donoghue.

“So, how do you react when things go wrong? We sometimes forget the power of our own modelling as parents. Children learn a lot from how we, adults, manage our feelings.”

Give examples of things that might happen that are beyond our control, O’Donoghue says: “If you have a flat tyre, do you get very stressed? Or do you say, ‘Oops, this tyre is flat, we have to take a little detour’?

“If there’s a delayed flight, for example, it’s a good opportunity for a parent to ask themselves, ‘What would I hope my kids see from how I manage my feelings around this?’ Maybe you’re on a team in a big game and it doesn’t work out — are you able to celebrate what went well? What are you modelling when you receive your kids’ results [and you’re disappointed]? Do you focus on the positives too?”

Things not going according to plan have a very big upside, Hayes says. “We build strength from the opportunities that don’t go our way. Children who have coped with challenges learn to take disappointment in their stride, so it’s not about removing disappointment, but helping them cope with it.”