How to help your child deal with disappointments

 

This week, with Beckie Whitehouse, we are talking about facing disappointment.  As adults we often face disappointments in our lives and it is just the same for children, especially when they have put their all into a particular task and it has not quite worked out as they had planned.

Children who are better able to deal with disappointment are better able to interpret failure, have a stronger sense of personal achievement and are better able to bounce back when things go wrong in their lives.

As parents, we are a major contributor to the thinking styles of our child’s developing minds, and there are a few things we can do to help such as not showing our own disappointment. Showing your own emotions of disappointment could lead your child to feel that they are a failure. Try to turn your own disappointment into a positive such as “you didn’t get the mark you wanted this time but I know how hard you worked”.

Teach your child to help her think optimistically to ‘decatastrophize’ the situation – that is – help your child see that the bad event may not be as bad or will not have the adverse consequences imagined. Few things in life are as devastating as we fear, yet we blow them up in our minds.

Here are our three top tips:

• look at positive of a situation and turn it around.
• Reward the efforts rather than the end result.
• Separate the disappointments from your own

Has your child faced disappointment before?  How did you help them deal with it?

Sharing is caring!