A few weeks ago, my daughter came home from second grade, and she told me she wasn’t invited to her friend Samantha’s birthday party. I asked her if she knew how many kids were invited, and she told me twenty. I was incensed. It was a big party, not a small, exclusive gathering, and my baby was left out. I knew that, in that moment, I could do two things: acknowledge that being left out hurts, or pick up the phone and call Samantha’s mom to secure an invitation. I had to deliberately focus on the former and stop myself from instinctually choosing the latter because, these days, it seems like we are all defaulting to the phone call.
The instinct is understandable. We all hate watching our children suffer. But we need to remember that there is a clear difference between supporting our children through disappointment and making sure they never experience it.
OUR KIDS AREN’T BROKEN. WE NEED TO STOP TREATING EVERY STRUGGLE LIKE A DISORDER
It seems like we have lost our ability to tolerate ordinary childhood struggles. We pathologize and diagnose every negative experience—sadness becomes depression, meanness becomes bullying, and frustration becomes emotional dysregulation. And each unsavory, undesirable part of life becomes an intervention target. Parents feel pressure to act rather than simply let life unfold.
But the reality is that life is messy and often uncomfortable, and not every negative emotion is evidence of a problem that requires us to intervene. Emotional discomfort isn’t inherently dangerous, and, in fact, negative experiences can serve important developmental functions. Coping with adversity helps kids recognize what matters to them, adjust expectations, solve problems, and navigate relationships. When we have a myopic focus on protecting children’s mental health, we often forget that mental health is based not on the absence of negative emotions but on our ability to handle them.
As parents, we must remember that resilience requires practice, and competence develops through experience. Children build coping skills when they encounter manageable challenges, experiment with solutions, and discover that they can tolerate discomfort. And all this requires the possibility of failure. Children never develop the ability to recover from disappointment if they don’t have the opportunity to feel it.
I WORRY LESS ABOUT SCREENS THAN ABOUT THE CHALLENGES TODAY’S TEENS NEVER FACE
Parents have a key role to play in the development of self-efficacy. We communicate our expectations about what they can do. When we give our children space to learn and grow, we communicate that they can handle challenges on their own. On the flip side, when we repeatedly intervene to solve their problems, we send the message that they can’t do it without us. It’s impossible to teach kids to swim by keeping them out of the water!
Constantly rescuing our kids has three unintended consequences. First, it undermines self-efficacy. Children look to adults to solve problems rather than trusting themselves and discovering their own resourcefulness. Second, it reinforces avoidance. Children learn that unpleasant emotions are intolerable rather than temporary experiences that they can manage. Third, it creates unrealistic expectations. Children learn to expect the world to accommodate their preferences rather than learning to manage unfairness, frustration, rejection, and disappointment.
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Of course, children often need support. Removing demands may, at times, be necessary. But when we reflexively remove demands instead of helping children develop the capacity to navigate them, we prioritize short-term relief over long-term growth.
We must deliberately support our children without constantly rescuing them. First, we should validate the feeling without catastrophizing it. Acknowledge the disappointment, but don’t amplify it into a crisis. Second, resist the urge to solve the problem. Before intervening, ask whether it is something your child can reasonably navigate independently. Third, help your child develop their own solutions. You can ask them what they could do next or what they might try differently next time, but remember that sometimes the best intervention is no intervention at all. Sometimes children just need time to feel bad and move on.
When I think about my own daughter and that birthday party, I wonder if maybe this will give her the opportunity and motivation to make a new friend. Maybe she’ll learn to cope with exclusion. Maybe she’ll just feel bummed for the afternoon and move on. All are developmentally meaningful (and desirable) outcomes. And I remember that my job isn’t to eliminate adversity and disappointment; it’s to help her become a person who can handle the struggles that are inevitably part of life.
I don’t want to raise someone who never falls down; I want to raise someone who knows how to get back up.