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Helping kids deal with rejection requires tact

3 min read

Many of the youngsters I see in my office feel like failures. They may have done poorly in school, been rejected by peers, or gotten in trouble at home. They have given up on life and thus experience even more rejection.

The normal parental response to such children is to empathize with their emotional state. We tell kids we understand their feelings of disappointment or sadness. We urge our kids to talk about what is going on in their lives, and then offer encouragement and reassurance. We want so desperately for kids to feel good about themselves and not experience any emotional distress.

This is generally a waste of time and the wrong approach with these youngsters. In fact, such a sympathetic style only exacerbates the problem.

Instead, these kids need to learn that failure and rejection are a normal part of living. They need to develop resiliency rather than receive sympathy.

When I work with such youngsters, I ask them to read about the lives of famous people such as Michael Jordan, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Thomas Edison, J.K. Rowling Jerry Seinfeld, or Steve Jobs.

These amazing individuals all share one thing in common. They all experienced significant rejection.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from one job because she was “unfit for TV.” Jerry Seinfeld was booed off the stage at a comedy club. The author of the Harry Potter books was divorced, depressed, and poor while she was raising a child and writing a novel.

Bad stuff happens daily to most of us. We need to stop protecting our kids from the normal rejections that are an intrinsic part of life. Instead, we should help kids understand that while we cannot control what the world does to us, we can control how we respond to the world.

Rejection shouldn’t ever be an excuse for self-induced pity, but rather a catalyst to action.

Try this if you have a child who is having a hard time dealing with rejection:

• Express an understanding of their feelings and offer encouragement, but don’t talk endlessly about how badly they feel.

• Encourage a realistic view of life, and discuss some of your own disappointments and hurts.

• Ask them what they intend to do differently. Don’t ever accept “I don’t know” as a response.” That’s just a way to say “I’m too lazy to work on my problem.”

• Encourage your child to dream big but act small. Help them set modest but achievable goals.

• Encourage a strong work ethic. Success comes from working, not wishing.

Life is easier to navigate when you view failure as expected and respond with a positive, can-do attitude.

Dr. Gregory Ramey is a child psychologist at Dayton Children’s Hospital.

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