What To Do When Your Kids Are Disappointed

What you say and what you do can make a huge difference for your child. In fact, you can give them skills that will set them up for a life of success.

Let’s kick this conversation off with a story. 

When my son was in Little League, I set a goal of attending all of his games. Then I got an invitation to speak at a business meeting. 

However, accepting the invitation meant missing one and maybe two games. 

What I do? I called my own parenting coach to discuss it. She said, “Let’s say you accept the invitation to speak. So life happened and you can’t be there for one game. Yes, your son will be disappointed. Why are you making your son’s disappointment into such a big problem?”

Her questions stopped me in my tracks. 

Then she gently continued, “Maybe this is your son’s chance to get some experience managing disappointment. And it’s your chance to see he can live through it.“

So, in this podcast episodes I would like to offer some insights into why our kids’ disappointment tends to be such a problem for us parents.

I’ll also lay out the price everyone pays when you’re unwilling to live with the discomfort of disappointment.

Last I would like to share with you what you CAN do when your child is disappointed.

First, what is disappointment?

Disappointment is the feeling you get when people or events or circumstances do not turn out as you hoped or expected. That’s all disappointment is— a feeling. 

You arrive into adulthood mastering the lessons your parents taught you about how you manage disappointment. 

When I was a child life felt chaotic. While my mom did her very best, she often broke promises she made to me. I was disappointed every time it happened. My mother would get angry if I told her I was disappointed.

I learned to protect myself by abandoning the idea I could count on my mom. It’s no surprise that keeping my promises was one of my highest values as a parent—and why I would resist even the possibility that my son could be disappointed in the future.

Here are some things you might have been taught when you were a kid.

Let’s pretend painful feelings like disappointment don’t exist 

My family taught me this: Don’t talk about disappointment. If you’re disappointed, pretend everything is okay. 

On a very basic level, our human brains tell us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. If you try to distract yourself or numb your unpleasant feelings, you’re not alone. Lots of people prefer a glass of wine or shopping or eating to sitting with an unpleasant feeling for two minutes. 

However, any attempt to resist or numb or avoid feelings makes them worse. 

Maybe the initial disappointing circumstances result in a feeling that’s a 3 out of 10 on the ouch scale. 

Avoiding disappointment brings it up to a 5. Further, now your brain believes that disappointment is dangerous and should be avoided in the future.

Pull out the ABC’s —accuse, blame and criticize. Your brain is a sense-making machine. It wants to create a story that explains why things are as they are.  When you’re disappointed your human brain wants to point the finger at someone who did something wrong, and it’s most often the person in the mirror. Judgment, blame and shame can raise the ouch score to 8 or 9. 

There are many reasons that bad outcomes happen, and most times it’s nobody’s fault. 

If you’ve ever had an operation, your surgeon has a conversation called informed consent in which they share the benefits of the procedure and warn you about the potential risks. As a way of saying you understand, you sign the consent form and go to the operating room. 

What happens if you get a post-operative infection?

Intellectually you know that this could happen, because the surgeon specifically said it could. Still, your human brain will want to find someone or something to blame. However, in most cases of post-operative infections, everyone did everything right. As they say, stuff happens.

See disappointment as a punishment rather than as a teacher.

When you try something and don’t get the results you want, it’s often described as a failure.

Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.

When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?"

Edison replied,"I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.” 

How often did your parents say to you, “What can you learn from this experience?” Most people say, Never!” 

That means you don’t get guidance about how to create different results next time.

Avoid circumstances that might lead to disappointment. 

If someone was disappointed after they tried a new restaurant, they might avoid trying other new restaurants to protect themselves from being disappointed again. They don’t go after the new job or the raise. If a friend lets them down they may decide not to try to make new friends or find a new life partner. 

As an aside, most people believe that their circumstances cause the disappointment. Your experience with OCD helps you understand that circumstances don’t create feelings; the thoughts about the circumstances create feelings.

A car with a license plate ending with the number 7 crossing your path is a neutral circumstance that you might not even notice. Your child with OCD might see the license plate and think, “Seven is an unlucky number, and bad things will happen.” That thought triggers an avalanche of anxiety. Then they launch into their compulsions to get temporary relief from the anxiety.

Avoid actions that might led someone else to be disappointed.  

As I considered the speaking invitation, I assumed that my son would be disappointed if I did not attend a game, but I didn’t know because I didn’t ask him. 

Here’s what’s interesting. We had a ritual around making decisions. Each of us would answer the question, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it to you to buy a toy/ get your room clean/ play catch in the back yard.”

When I was invited to speak, I could have asked my son, “How important is having me at every one of your games? On a scale of 1 to 10, how disappointed would you be if I missed one of your games?” I could have been surprised at his answer! 

Why didn’t I didn’t ask the question. Maybe even considering a future in which my son would be disappointed was so uncomfortable I wanted to avoid it. 

As a reminder, you do not cause other people to be disappointed. Your actions create a circumstance like missing a game. However, the other person’s thoughts—not their circumstances—create their feelings.

I remember a snow day. My son was doing a happy dance while I wrestled my anxiety about how I would mange my work obligations I planned to do when my son was at school. Same circumstance. A snow day. Very different thoughts and feelings

So, we arrive in adulthood bringing lessons we’ve been taught about disappointment. 

Then we become parents. What’s our #1 job? Keeping our kids safe. 

If you’ve been taught that disappointment is unsafe, doesn’t it make sense to want to protect your children from it?

Then if you have a child who is neurodivergent—whether it’s OCD or ADHD or autism,—you know that our culture is build for neurotypical children. It’s already very difficult for our kids to shine in a world that judges and dismisses them.

This is a far cry from our hope that every child is seen and celebrated.

 And that delivers a healthy dose of disappointment both for us and for our kids. 

Back then—before I did my own thought work—my brain offered an argument that went something like this, “Okay neurodivergent kids already get three quarters of their daily or weekly or monthly  quota of disappointment from their teachers and peers and family. I’ll do what I can to keep him below the disappointment quota.”  

Given all this, of course we parents would try to shield our kids from excess disappointment.

So, why is that a problem?

Disappointment is a part of life. We want to give our kids experience bouncing back from adversity.

Plus, the alternatives to feeling disappointment have negative consequences.  

Efforts to avoid or escape or numb our feelings don’t work. Your kids’ compulsions are efforts to avoid feeling intense unpleasant feelings. In the end, it’s doing more harm than good. 

Further, if you make choices based on avoiding the uncomfortable feelings like disappointment, your world gets smaller as you close yourself off from experiences. This is one of the feared consequences of unmanaged OCD.

I would like to suggest our parenting goal is to help our kids build confidence that they can live through any feeling that they have.

Once you know that you can tolerate any feeling, there’s nothing to fear ever again.

So, if you’re not going to pass along the lessons your parents taught you about managing disappointment, what do you do instead?

It Begins with You

Your ability to help your child manage his or her disappointment is contingent on your ability to get comfortable with your own disappointment.

In the last podcast episode, we discussed a protocol. On a high level, here are the steps.

First, recognize disappointment.  Disappointment is just a feeling and a feeling is nothing more than a sensation in your body. Where do you feel it in your body? What are some clues you might be disappointed?

Second, give yourself permission to feel the disappointment. Feelings won’t consume you. You can literally set a timer for 3 or 4 minutes to just feel the disappointment. 

If you find yourself resisting disappointment, say, “Oh how human of me!” Then you might practice a thought like, “I’m feeling disappointment.” Or, “This is what disappointment feels like.” The process of naming separates yourself from it.  

Third, manage your mind. Observe the thoughts you have once you feel disappointment. Many people say abusive things to themselves that they would never say to people they love. “Things never go your way. Why do you even try?”  Or, “This is what happens when you get too big for your britches” Or, “You’re such a loser.” 

Beating up on yourself or others will NOT help you create the results you want. Compassion and curiosity will. 

If you find yourself beating up on yourself, say, “Oh how human of me. My brain has practiced this thought all my life.” Then think a new kinder thought like “It’s possible I can live through disappointment.” Or, “I’m stronger than my disappointment.”.

Next, objectively describe the results you created. Let’s say you’re disappointed because you set a goal but did not meet it. 

Business coach Dan Sullivan suggests that you should look forward as you set a goal, and then look back as you measure your results. 

Let’s say you decide that you want to regulate your anger after hearing yourself shouting at your kids, “Stop yelling!”

You get through a week successfully regulating your anger and then you have a blow-up. 

What do you focus on? The one blow-up or the entire week of regulating your anger?

Is it really that terrible if you shoot for the stars and and wind up on the moon? Celebrate when you’re moving in the right direction.

5. Explore what can you do differently next time. You have two choices to narrow the disappointment gap: 

1. Change your dreams and expectations. 
2. Figure out what you can do differently next time to get the results you want.

Let’s say you’re disappointed because your own parents refuse to educate themselves about OCD, and they continue to see OCD as a moral character failing. 

What’s the source of your disappointment? You have a manual for how your parents should behave, and they’re not following your manual. 

You think that if you just do things differently your parents will comply with your manual and you won’t be disappointed. 

You might try all sorts of tricks to inspire your parents to act differently.

And you continue to be disappointed. 

Your disappointment may be teaching you that efforts to make others follow your manual are futile. 

What if, instead, you decide to throw out the manual and accept your parents as they are. When your dad says something hurtful about your child, you can say, “That’s Dad being Dad.” Of course, you create boundaries to keep yourself and your child safe. However, you focus is on things that you controls like coaching your child what to say and do when people say hurtful things. 

One of my mentors summarizes the big idea when she says, “You know how you go to the gym to get stronger? Go to the disappointment gym. Work out. It will be hard and uncomfortable at first. Keep at it. It will get easier. “

When Your Child is Disappointed

Managing our own disappointment is one thing; watching your child manage disappointment is another.

You may feel the urge to just swoop in and make things better. 

What if your radical act of courage as a parent is to coach your kids to feel their feelings, chose their thoughts on purpose and treat themselves with more self-compassion?

You can take your kids through the exact same steps you just learned about managing disappointment in an age-appropriate way.

When your child is very young, you may do some emotional coaching. You can ask your child, “You look sad. What’s going on? When they tell you the story, you can say, “Oh, your best friend told your secret, and you expect friends to keep your secrets.  Have I got it? When people don’t act the way you want them to act you can be disappointed. Do you think that’s what’s going on with you?” 

You can help your young child notice what disappointment feels like in their bodies.

Encourage activities to get the feelings out. It might be through drawing or singing or moving their bodies. As they get older they can journal.

Imagine if your kids could trust that it’s safe to have any feeling?. 

Imagine if you communicate to your kids with words and actions that it’s safe for them to express any feelings to you— in a way that’s appropriate for your family—no matter what. 

What if your child doesn’t talk about their feelings with you?

I’m going to say something that could be hard to hear. It’s possible that your child has learned that it’s not safe to tell you how they’re feeling. 

You can change that! Have a conversation with your family. You can say, “When I was growing up, we kids learned that there were some things we just didn’t talk about, like money. We learned that you don’t feel or talk about unpleasant feelings like disappointment. 

I see what a high price I paid when we tried to pretend that disappointment does not exist. That’s why I want to make our house a safe place to talk about any feeling you have, including disappointment.”

Then be vulnerable and begin talking about your own disappointment. 

Let’s say you ordered a pillow online. It arrives and it isn’t the right color or you don’t like the fabric.  You can say out loud, “ I had an idea about what this pillow would be like based on the picture on the web site. Then I got somethings different than I expected. How disappointing!” 

Your child might be reluctant to tell you about their disappointment if they think that you will try to launch into fixing things. 

Let’s say that your child took a risk and wrote her college admissions essay about how she learned to master her OCD. She was not accepted.

That college was her #1 choice. She says, “I wish I didn’t talk about my OCD in my essay. That’s why they rejected me.”

Of course this thought may or may not be true.

You might be tempted to just launch into your mother bear and say, “That is just not right. I’m going to make some calls and get this fixed.”  

How about if you’re willing to just sit with your child as they feel their disappointment  You can say “I know how much you wanted to go to this college. I see how disappointed you are, and how much it hurts.” Your words and actions can say, “I hear you. I see you. I’m here no matter what.” 

Validate their feelings by letting them know that it's normal to feel upset or let down. Remind them that the best way to get over a feeling is to go directly through it. 

You can also help your kids expand their problem-solving and decision-making skills. Maybe this parent could encourage her child to call the admissions officer and get some insights into whether her transparency about her OCD factored into why she wasn’t accepted. 

Play the “what if” game and imagine what they could do or say if different things happened.

In summary, managing disappointment and other feelings differently than you were taught is a radical act of courage. 

You are building new parenting muscles. 

You and your kids are mastering new skills. 

Go to the disappointment gym. Work out. It will be hard and uncomfortable at first. Keep at it. It will get easier. 

The same ideas can help your child manage other uncomfortable  feelings like guilt, shame and grief.

Let's remember that disappointment is a part of life, and it's how we respond to it that truly matters. We can navigate through disappointments and come out stronger on the other side