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Dear Keystonians,

How was your week? The weather seemed to be a little on and off, a perfect beautiful day, a gloomy day, a perfect day, then another gloomy one. It got me thinking about moods. In schools, and lives filled with kids, caring adults are present to help children and young people navigate disappointment, from the big to the small.

As caring adults (teachers, parents or others) we get lots of practice helping children learn to deal with things that don’t go exactly their way. The sum of these experiences, and the ability to deal with them, is resilience. There has been ample discussion in parenting, educational and psychological thinking and research in the last decade about the phenomena of helicopter parents and, more recently, snowplow parents. Both metaphors are just what they sound like: helicopter parents hover, they are always there and prevent the development of healthy independence. Snowplow parents actively seek to remove any possible obstacles or sense of discomfort from their children’s lives. Both behaviors in excess have been found to have long-term negative impacts on child development. But how do we know the difference between being appropriately protective--doing our best to keep kids safe and happy, and ensuring they are not disadvantaged in a competitive world-- and protecting them from the extreme developmental risks of never failing, never feeling discomfort or never enduring disappointment? Raising resilient young people is hard work, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t lots of second guessing involved.

This week my own daughter missed a deadline for a travel study option at her school. She had been talking about it for months with her friends, but she was on a trip for sports and just forgot. She sent me a text message:

bruh i never submitted my travel app and they said I can’t submit late 

[translation: Oh my! Mom! I failed to submit my travel application for the summer study programs. I have already inquired as to an exception and have been told it is too late. I am so disappointed and only three small faces with a single tear in each of their eyes can express the depth of my sadness.]

Triple single tear emoji!! I couldn’t believe it. My heart sank; my poor sweet disappointed daughter!

I replied:

So sorry honey. That’s okay, you’ll find something great to do.

[no interpretation required because I was not raised texting, and I text like a proper grown up.]

But that’s not what I was feeling; it was not okay! She had been dreaming of this since she was a little girl! I used to oversee the program that designed all of these travel programs, and in elementary school she actually came along on some of these trips with the high school students. I had always wanted her to have this opportunity in her senior year—I had thought about it a lot. Oh no! What a terrible disappointment. Maybe I could call someone and ask for an exception to the deadline… my spiral of sad thoughts was interrupted by a second text from her:

it’s okay i feel like it’s not that deep

I will do something fun anyway

Huh, I thought. She was more resilient than I was in this moment! It is not uncommon for parents to feel sad about something that impacts their kids. In this moment, I feel like I was kind of lucky that we were texting—maybe if we had been face-to -face she would have seen the little [actual] tear in my eye at the news, and that would have impacted her. Maybe she would have worried that she had disappointed me by missing the deadline. I have to admit that in that movement, and maybe a little still, I was quite tempted to be a snowplow parent. I am sure I could call the school and make the case that she was away on a school trip over the weekend and why would they have the deadline on a weekend—isn’t that against a policy about homework being due in the weekend evenings? Maybe? Nope. That would be trying to remove a completely developmentally appropriate obstacle that she will learn from.

And what a gift for her to learn from disappointments and be able to believe that something better will work out. That is more than resilience, it’s optimism.

This is a silly little everyday example from life with a teenager. But the thinking applies to the bigger things in their lives and ours too. Meeting disappointment with simple 1, 2, 3 process can help:

1)    Oh shucks. It makes sense to be disappointed about that.

2)    How do you want to move forward? I am sure there are great things ahead for you.

3)    What a great learning opportunity this was. You are now more resilient!

We must both allow for and acknowledge feelings of disappointment or sadness or grief or loss, but we also must know that any path we have planned for our child is bound to have unpredicted twists and turns (not to mention their own plans, which can end up being different from ours!). And the time between those three steps can vary depending on the severity of the disappointment or event. If a favorite restaurant is out of your favorite dish, that would be quick. If you don’t get into your top choice college, maybe there would be a few hours between each step.

The opportunity in this is to shift from seeing those twists and turns as failures, or disappointments, but as opportunities to learn. This can help soften the sting of a sad blow. If we train ourselves and our children to know that things are not always going to go as planned (or as hoped), this prepares them for a more productive, successful and happy life.

Warmly,

Emily