Feeling Rejected

When you first lay eyes on your child, you make a promise to him or her that you will never let anything or anyone harm them—and then the real world meets your child and opens up bumps, bruises and emotional let downs that come with losing a game or not getting invited to the party. After accepting that unless you want to stick your child in a bubble suit and never let him out of the house again, you’re left with the only thing you do have control over: supporting your child and helping him become emotionally resilient, despite the hardships and ups and downs that come with living in the real world.

“When my son is left out of an event, it makes me really sad. But I can’t make people include him even if I want to, so I try to explain to him that sometimes in life you don’t always get to be included in an event,” Katrina Johnigan, Kansas City mother and educator, says. “However I also try to instill in him that when he leaves other kids out, that this is the same way that they feel, and I encourage him to be inclusive.”

Resilience is the term often used from a psychological perspective to describe the process of adapting to or overcoming challenges of adversity, loss, hardships or other stressors in life. In general, it refers to overcoming or “bouncing back” from hard times.

For children and teens, negotiating being left out of a group activity with their friends or getting cut from a team can be difficult experiences to handle and illicit emotional responses of anger or sadness. The emotions themselves are natural and to be expected. In fact, many times they are tools that we use to help us move through the stages of “bouncing back” from adversity. Everyday life experiences, as well as times of adversity, are all moments to use to help your child learn the behaviors that develop healthy resilience.

The good news is that being resilient is not something you either have or don’t. It can be taught and strengthened in various ways. Successful research and teaching techniques have been difficult to develop, because resilience varies greatly depending on life experiences, family and community structures, and a person’s natural emotional tolerance. However, researchers have found a number of strategies to help you succeed when working with your child to build healthy resilience.

As a parent, you can make sure that your child has several different sources of personal connection, both inside and outside of the family. Expose your child to various experiences and help him build a network of people who care about him. You can encourage healthy behaviors in general to support strong mental health, such as physical activity and nutritious eating habits. Model and teach emotions through listening to your child and helping her properly label how she is feeling. Then teach her how to express those emotions. Discuss the idea that change is a part of life and that sometimes this change leads us to things that we may have never otherwise done. For instance, if your child is cut from a team, it may open up an opportunity to try a different activity. Help him keep things in perspective—this is not really the end of his world. And when playing games with your children, teach them to win or lose with a respectful attitude.

“My boys play basketball, and last year they won a lot of games, but this year not so much. It was hard for them to have so many losses, but I try to talk with them about how sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and that there will be another season and that you have to get back up and keep working,” says Johnigan.

Through using opportunities that your child experiences in everyday life, you can help him develop resilience. This in turn will help your child overcome trials throughout his lifetime.  

Karah Thornton is a school psychologist in the Kansas City area. She encourages the healthy expression of emotions.