A young boy loses his baseball game. His father responds "That is unacceptable. We are not losers in this family. Next time you are gonna win or else..."
Shame.
A young girl gets 6th place in her track meet and does not earn a trophy. Her mother responds "Oh honey- don't worry. We will go get you a trophy right now from the store down the street ok? You deserve a trophy like everyone else."
Entitlement.
Two sides of the same coin- the currency of disappointment.
Disappointment is hard and uncomfortable and every parent knows that watching your kids feel disappointed is no walk in the park.
And so we mask it in denial and hide it away under meaningless symbols of accomplishments we wish for.
There is so much criticism of the current trends where "everyone's a winner" but we are mistaken if we think disappointment was always handled better in the idealized past.
Parents that rush their child over the potholes of disappointment and shame them for these inevitable encounters on life's journey do their children the same disservice as present -day parents trying to cover potholes up and pretend they are not a part of life.
Disappointment hurts. It stings. It aches. It sucks. I hate watching my kids lose- when they don't get a prize or their efforts aren't recognized. I hate it when they tell me someone didn't want to play with them or when we can't do something they were looking forward to.
I don't want them to be embarrassed or nervous or awkward or sad. I know what that's like and when your kids feel it, it's 10 times worse. You are supposed to protect them after all right? Why did you bring them into this world? To suffer? To be.... Human?
Because that's what it is right?
Disappointment is just a part of being human.... And being uncomfortable, even painful, doesn't make it wrong. With so many conveniences around all the time we forget that we are not made for comfort. We are so used to being comfortable that discomfort feels wrong.
But to avoid disappointment we pay a high price- we must feed the internal demons of shame and dishonesty telling ourselves we can't be disappointed without becoming a disappointment or that our disappointment isn't real, that there was no loss, nothing to grieve. We think these lies save us from the pain of disappointment but ultimately they become our poison, stripping us of invaluable pieces of our humanity and our human experience.
Ironically, in wanting to protect our children from disappointment, we steal from them an opportunity to learn resilience- to learn how to be disappointed and get through it.
And we also chip away at their capacity for compassion because you cannot empathize with experiences you haven't had.
The best thing we can do for our children is give them space to be human- to have their own journey even as we hold their hands. They deserve to have the whole human experience we have gotten- in all its pain and disappointing glory.
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