The Importance of Disappointment
We’ve all been there. And I think we can all agree that it sucks. It doesn’t feel good to be disappointed. It doesn’t feel good to be let down, to have something not go as expected, to be told no when you really, really, REALLY wanted to be told yes. It can bring up feelings of sadness, loss, frustration, even anger. As parents, we all want to protect our children from things that hurt, even feelings like sadness, loss, frustration, anger, and disappointment. But what are we really protecting them from?
Turns out that when we are protecting children from disappointment by avoiding the experience, we are risking that our children will not learn how to face and move through disappointment. We are sheltering them from a very important experience. Experiencing disappointment in childhood is actually valuable and important.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that we throw our children into the trenches of the depths of disappointment and let them flounder to find a way to cope. As a Montessorian, I believe wholeheartedly and completely that it is our responsibility as the adults and elders of their world to prepare their environment for success. And part of that success is guiding our children through the feelings of disappointment.
Children in the First Plane of Development (birth - 6 years) are learning and adjusting to the expectations of the world they live in. They are moving from having all of their needs met in infancy to becoming more and more functionally independent. As you can imagine, this is hard work. Children this young have no context or previous experience to rely on as reassurance that boundaries exist and are a necessary part of life and that while disappointment isn’t easy, it is something we can move through.
Why is it important to feel comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and disappointed?
I think the short answer is that the experience is inevitable. Digging a little deeper, avoiding teaching coping mechanisms and instead shielding children or giving in to desires in the spirit of protecting our children from sadness, pain, frustration, disappointment, etc., children can unintentionally feel inadequate by not having coping mechanisms, they can become entitled, they can end up lacking confidence in difficult situations , they can fail to learn to regulate their emotions. I would guess we all want our children to feel confident, compassionate and empathetic and be able to regulate emotions.
Learning that you can do hard things is very empowering. Knowing how to regulate emotions is invaluable.
When we do not allow our children to experience and move through disappointment, they do not learn how to cope with it. When we do not know how to cope with something stressful like disappointment, our brains get overwhelmed and stop functioning at full capacity. When our brains are not functioning at full capacity, neither are we. Some things that happen when we are in this state of overwhelm are:
We dispace our frustration onto someone or something else. For a First Plane child, this can look like throwing things, hitting/kicking, etc.
We tune out. This is getting very quiet and deep in our thoughts. It can feel like we are underwater, sinking into our feelings and further away from the world around us. We can lose awareness of what is happening outside ourselves.
We panic. This is the Fight / Flight / Freeze reaction.
Remember, everything right now is practice for the child. They are practicing how to be adults. Allow them to practice moving through disappointment just as you allow them to practice anything else. Prepare the environment to the best of your ability, give them time and grace, and allow them to fail and learn from that failure. It is through this practice that they become confident in managing challenges that you and I both know we can not shield them from, no matter how much we want to.
A wonderful resource in managing regulation of emotions is The Whole Brain Child by Daniel Siegel. It is a book I recommend to parents time and time again. It is also a book I revisit multiple times a year.
