How Do You Help Your Kids Overcome Rejection?
January 31, 2012 at 6:46 pm
by Heather Eng
Break-ups. Friendship falling outs. Getting passed over for a promotion. Even for us adults, dealing with disappointment isn’t easy–and, in most cases, we’ve been there before and know what we need to get over it, whether it’s time, support from friends and family members, or just keeping busy and staying positive.
But for a teen getting dumped by her first love or receiving a thin envelope from his dream college, the experience can be crushing–especially because it’s something they’ve never dealt with before.
In “How to Help Teens Deal with Rejection,” in Family Circle‘s March issue, writer Ashlea Halpern gets experts’ advice on helping your kid through those social, romantic, extracurricular and academic letdowns that make them feel like their world is ending. Check out the full article here, then tell us:
What crushing disappointments have you helped your kids overcome? Would you have done anything differently? Share in the comments below.
I have to disagree with Dr. Prinstein when he suggests to not contact a bully or his parents because “doing so infantilizes the child.”
In my daughter’s case I had to intervene and contact the parents. In fact, I had to contact the police liason officer at the school because my daughter was the victim of bullying. Not only was her locker broken into, but the bully started up a web site that was filled with filthy lies about my daughter & he encouraged his friends to comment on his web site as well. This was devastating to my daughter and I finally found a counselor to help her through this. It’s been a year now and she is doing much better. But I have this to say, if your child says that “someone is ruining her life” it’s worth checking into and not brushing it off because in this case this person was ruining her life and her reputation. I strongly suggest contacting the parents of the bully, filing a harassment complaint on the website and contacting the police especially if the bully refuses to quit bullying. In my case, the website suspended all activity on the bully’s website, the police told the bully to leave my daughter alone, and contacting the parents helped keep the lines of communication open between us.
This article really hit home this month!
My daughter is in her first year of high school and has asperger syndrome. Very few people in her “circle” know she suffers from this although they do know she’s “different”.
We have kept her social skills up with volunteer activities as well as extracurricular ones. This year she decided to try out for the school softball team. She’s a pretty good 3rd baseman and actually made the team. About a week later the coach announced due to budget cuts he would have to cut 4 of the girls off the team. The day of the cuts my daughter was told by a few teammates that she would be cut. I encouraged her to go to practice until the final word came from the coach. Later that day she was cut and a few of the girls came up to her and said “I told you”. That crushed her more than being cut. Using advice from your article I helped her to overcome her emotional upset. Its a bit different when you deal with someone who has aspergers. After I managed to get her down from her closet shelf, we laughed over some of my failures in high school. What really helped was her older sister, who went to the same high school, posted the best message on facebook. it read:
“definition of bully: a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.
here is to the girls who purposfully hurt someone i know. you think u are so funny going around hurting someones feelings, when they were already hurt. ur not funny, your immature and a bully!!!!! its people like you who tear down people, who cause them to not feel wanted or good enough.
Now lets talk about what a team is. You can be on a team and call urself a team player, but that doesnt mean discouraging the weak and telling them they arent good enough, this means helping them and showing them they can do better. You want to be on a team then u should be a team player, not hating on girls who arent as superior as u. Its sad when u want to be on a team and the girls to begin with already peg u to be booted off, when really if they think they are better than u then they should be helping u not talking about u behind ur back. this person i know is talented and gifted and these highschool girls may think they have destroyed her, but in reality they have just built her up and showed her that she will be better and good enough and that in the future she wont be like them. She is awesome and she will do great things in life and for the bullies, i cant wait till u are on the sidelines watching her.
As I read that out loud to my daughter over fast food (something I NEVER do on a school night) I could tell in her way she knew she would survive. The first day back to school was the toughest. My daughter wanted to stay home–begged me to let her–I put it back on her for the decision.If she really wanted to, sure she could but the first day is the hardest and then its old news. She went to school, that morning and it broke my heart. I knew she would hear who made it knowing she didn’t. I wouldn’t go back to high school to save my life. This little girl taught me a lot about courage that day.
Last Friday, my daughter announced she was going to try out for the boys baseball team. I would like to end the story saying she made it….but I already have my happy ending. For someone like her to get back out there tells me she knows she has a family that will love and support her through all her ups and downs!
For the third year in a row, my son didn’t make the middle school basketball team. He was crushed, but after we said how unfair, unfortunate and awful he felt, we talked a lot about what he could do to improve his game. To his credit, he’s planning to try again next year at high school so somehow defeat doesn’t stop him. That said, I keep recommending that he look into the volleyball team!