Teaching our Children Life Lessons
We all know that disappointment is part of life.
But explaining disappointment to a four year old is a bit different than understanding it as an adult.
I’m not sure if it’s experiencing years worth of broken promises and empty words from people who weren’t supposed to let me down. Or if it’s from a series of unfortunate incident’s growing up…or just a characteristic that I was born with…but I’m able to deal with things not working out.
Some people would call me pessimistic, but I’m convinced that I’m more of a realist. While I don’t want bad things or unfortunate things to happen, I’m one of those “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst” kind of people. I don’t like being let down. I don’t like to get my hopes up too high only to have them trampled on. I don’t like to build up a person, circumstance or situation and then it not work out like it’s supposed to.
So I’m reserved. I try not to dream or plan or hope for anything too far fetched for fear that it won’t work out. That way, when and if it does, it’s a pleasant and unanticipated surprise. And if it doesn’t, I never got my hopes up to begin with.
This week, Noah had to experience his first real disappointment in life.
For several, several weeks now, we’ve been planning for and anticipating my moms arrival. Her plane ticket was purchased months ago and we’ve been ticking down the days until she was set to arrive tomorrow. We made a fun little countdown chain and part of our bedtime routine was to remove another link and count the new number of days until Gran Gran got to visit.
We haven’t seen our families in almost two years. When we said goodbye at Cracker Barrel in January 2011, we knew we’d be saying goodbye for a while. And so far, no ones made it out to visit yet. So we were all excited and anticipating her arrival after going so long without seeing any family.
Being on your own 5,600+ miles away from any family is hard. Throw in the fact that we’re on an island, so the only way back to the mainland is via plane or ferry, and you can understand that any visits from those we love and care about are highly anticipated.
So, imagine all of our disappointment when a 6:00 am phone call yesterday morning dashed that excitement. Because Gran Gran isn’t coming tomorrow.
My heart absolutely broke for my biggest boy. Sunday night he was walking around in his Spiderman pajamas, holding up two fingers and squealing with excitement that his Gran Gran was coming in “just two more days!”
Me? I was bummed, but not overly surprised. Like I said, I don’t build myself up to anything. Because life happens and things don’t work out. So mom can’t make it when we originally planned. It sucks, but it’s no shock. Shake it off, let it roll off my back and move on.
But Noah? He’d been looking forward to her arrival for weeks. And I knew that telling him that shewasn’t coming was going to be a problem. He was going to be crushed.
And as I expected, when we broke the news, he was.
He cried. He asked several, several times why she wasn’t coming…why she couldn’t make it like we talked about….why we said she was coming when she wasn’t.
Lots of questions that my answers didn’t seem good enough for.
So, I was stuck between a rock and hard place. Trying to figure out how to handle his little broken heart.
Do I teach him to be excited and build up moments in life to be these spectacular, all you want and hope that they’ll be, events? Or do I teach him that life isn’t fair and that, more often than not, things don’t work out?
How do you handle disappointing situations with your children?
In case it wasn’t blatantly obvious, these photos have nothing to do with this post. Linking up with Shell @ Things I Can’t Say for Pour Your Heart Out.
My heart hurt reading this. I’m so sorry your mom isn’t coming. Is it postponed or indefinitely? I feel the same way as you. I can deal with disappointment. I don’t like it but my life’s circumstances have hardened me a bit so I try not to build things up. My kids have had their fair share of disappointments as well so I tell them the same thing I tell myself. God has something else in store for us. We don’t know what it is or when it is coming but it will. When they are as little as Noah, though…that is tough for them to understand. I think I just explained that some things can’t be helped and then probably did the worst thing possible: take them out for ice cream or let them get something at Target. I’m a huge sucker when a broken heart is involved. 🙂
Visiting from PYHO.
I wish I could be more of a pessimist. Then I wouldn’t be disappointed so much. I do not deal well with this, so I totally stink at teaching my kids about it.
Oh poor Noah. And you. I know how much you both were looking forward to your Mom’s arrival. I don’t have any advice, I haven’t had to go there yet with my boys. Maybe start another countdown chain to when your Mom can come?
Oh so sad 🙁 I love the building excitement of things and, even when they turn out to not be as planned, I think the excitement is still part of the fun.
I’m a bit like you. I wouldn’t consider myself a pessimist but I’ve always thought expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed. I don’t like to get my hope sup b/c then the disappointment is even bigger. I haven’t passed that sentiment on to my kids though. When my kids are disappointed I try to answer their questions the best I can and explain that life doesn’t always work out how we want. It’s a tough lesson to learn.
I’m sorry that she can’t be there when you thought she would be.
I’m learning that my kids get over disappointments a lot quicker than I do. Because they are sad in the moment, but they are able to move on while I wallow. I need to borrow my kids’ attitudes!
Well, for us, being a family of faith in Christ, we use moments like these to stop and remember that while we plan for our future, God our Father is “the big boss of it all.” We remember that no circumstance is above or below His radar, that He knows every.single.detail., and He knows what’s best for us (even better than we do!) all the time. It’s great to be excited about things. It’s great to anticipate good things. And it’s blissful when the things we’ve so desired come to pass. But….even when they don’t go just the way we hoped they would, God is still working and “up to something” even better for us…and now we have something new to get excited about! We also use these opportunities to remember and recount instances (in the Bible or in our own lives) that testify to God knowing better than we do and bestowing blessing that was good beyond our hopes. So….to answer your question…yes, ultimately we do teach our children that life/people/circumstances will disappoint us, and yes, we do have to deal with it. But by the same token, we don’t loose faith because of it. And yes, we also teach them that life isn’t “fair.” Some meat that our 6 and 8 year olds have been considering as of late when they complain about fairness…”Was it “fair” for Jesus to die on the cross when He was without sin?” and “If Jesus didn’t die for me, what would “fair” look like for me then?”
Best wishes! It’s difficult to watch their little hearts be broken and their little minds try and try to understand. Praying for you and your family as you work it all out.
Awh! Poor little guy! That’s so heartbreaking 🙁
You know I’m not an authority on parenting, but I think your little ritual and fun “plan” was ABSOLUTELY worth it, and definitely something you should continue doing – no matter what might happen. I mean, it’s not like you’re giving him a paper-chain countdown to winning the lottery. Your goals dreams ARE attainable, and sometimes these things just happen. Never let the fear of disappointment keep you from achieving what you want. EVER.
I know your pain. From the time I got married, it was close to five years before I saw my family again. And then 18 months of that time was in China so we saw didn’t see ANY family then. Now Jason deals with not seeing his family from this side. For us, its disappointing in that every time we think our family has come to accept our lifestyle — namely my hubby’s family — we find out they haven’t and are mad/not speaking to/or lecturing us. (I’m still not sure if the silence or the lectures are worse.)
Please don’t teach your babies that life isn’t fair. It’s my personal opinion that life will do that amply itself without our helping. I don’t want my babies to grow up thinking that the world is going to let them down because honestly, I choose to believe that the world is good place…it’s to depressing and painful if I don’t. I am preaching to the choir here because in the last few days, we have lost the house we thought was perfect for us…the one we helped to clean and get ready…all because the landlord (a pastor of a local church at that!) didn’t want to see through his end of the deal. So we cleaned and fixed some things for free. Lesson learned…you can’t even trust pastors! But I can’t let this get to me…I’m going to have a baby soon so I need all the positive energy I can get! There is awesome in the world — I’ve just got to find it. I’m really sorry your mum couldn’t make it for whatever reason. But I do know its like to be ‘the one who moved away’. You can do it!
Awe, this made me sad. I know you both were so excited about her coming. But, it’s true. Life happens and sometimes we just can’t make it happen the way WE think it should.
There hasn’t been anything as monumental as a long awaited visit fall through happen to Mason, but he’s three. And something as simple as “we were going to go to the zoo, but it’s 110 degrees outside today, sweetie, we just can’t go” seems to absolutely devastate him. I haven’t found a sure fire way to approach disappointment with him yet, but what I always do is make sure to acknowledge how he FEELS about the disappointment.
“I know you’re sad. I’m sad, too.” I try to make sure he understands that it’s okay to feel sad when something doesn’t happen the way you wanted to and that I empathize with him. I let him cry for a bit and then, after attempting to explain that sometimes it just doesn’t go the way we want it to go, I try to diffuse the situation by saying, “Let’s go find something to do that makes us super duper happy- right now!” Ice cream, visit to the park, water gun fight, dress up, pick out a new arts and craft project, etc.
I personally feel, that at such a young age, there’s no need to teach a child that “life isn’t fair” and things usually just don’t work out. That is a hard lesson that kids, teens and adults will learn on their own eventually.
Woo. That was longer than I expected.
Addendum (since I was thinking about this all last night):
Instead, I think I’d rather focus on teaching him how to COPE with disappointment, rather than to EXPECT it. These kiddos find joy in so many of the “little” things that I can’t imagine taking that light away from them just yet.