Kids & Disappointment: Can Disappointment Help Them?

“They said ‘no,’ huh? It didn’t work out. So what’s next?” I was looking forward to hearing those words from my father; words that I’ve definitely heard many times before as a kid. This was his answer any time I didn’t get what I wanted from a situation. This last conversation with these words happened just a few months ago when he came over for coffee one Sunday morning. I updated him on my latest news that I didn’t land the job that I had I set my sights on. Even though I anxiously waited months to hear a reply, and even though I felt humiliated and frustrated that I didn’t get it, the words put my situation into perspective and made everything about my news feel a lot less enormous. When my father left my house that morning I was starting to feel like I could move on with my life. His reply signaled my brain to process the situation like this: They said no and that’s the end of it. It’s time to stop obsessing. What a relief for an overthinker like me. For me, this kind of reaction, or maybe it’s more precise to call it a non- reaction, always frames my disappointment in a healthy way by pivoting the situation from borderline tragic to surmountable. In short, it lessens my disappointment and makes me resilient.