You’re at a party with your friends, and it’s time to leave. Your toddler starts crying and refusing to go with you. You plead with them, desperately trying to prove to them that leaving is the right thing to do: “it’s past your bedtime,” “I can see you’re tired”, “your brother needs to go to bed.” The next hour consists of your pleading, your toddler’s crying, and an escalating frustration for you and your little one.

Without realising it, your effort to get your toddler’s permission to leave is robbing them of their right to be disappointed and express negative emotion.

Disappointment is an essential emotion that toddlers need to experience so that they can learn how to deal with uncomfortable emotions and realise that they will survive! Your child will inevitably experience disappointment in all areas of life, such as in school when they play sports or participate in the arts and in their social lives. Ultimately, how our little one learns to respond to disappointment will determine their level of achievement and happiness later on in life.

Before we explore some ways you can help your child respond to disappointment, let’s take a look at a few reasons why protecting your child from disappointment can do more harm than good.

If you give in to your child’s wishes at your own expense, this gives your child a message that what your child wants is the natural order of things and that uncomfortable emotions such as frustration and disappointment are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.
Feeling guilty about disappointing your child can lead you to over-negotiate. You then plead with your child to agree with your request, and sometimes bribery ensues. Again, this reinforces the belief that your child should always get what they want and people around them need to adjust their needs and wants to please them.
By needing to get your toddler’s permission to prevent them from getting upset (i.e. pleading with them to leave a party when they don’t want to), you actually rob them of their right to dislike something and protest it. Your toddler has a right to express their negative feelings. And it is not your job to pacify them and take this feeling away from them.
By pleading with your toddler so they do not get upset or bribing them to keep the peace, you are training them into believing that their negative emotions are ‘bad’, which hinders the way they respond to life’s obstacles as they get older.
Toddlers lose resilience by not practising the give and take with other people’s needs.
They can become a people pleaser. If you react to your child’s disappointment, you compound their disappointment with your own. Not only are they disappointed but they learn that disappointment also means letting you down. They then grow up feeling responsible for other people’s feelings.
They can become self-centred, demanding and difficult to be around.
Preventing your toddler from disappointment can result in your child having very little or no genuine friendships as they will grow up always putting their needs first.

Now let’s take a look at a few ways you can respond to your child’s disappointment.

How do I respond to my child’s disappointment?

View your child’s disappointments as something positive that prepare them for adulthood. Reassure them that what they are feeling is OK and support them to be with their emotions. “ I know you’re upset. And that’s OK”.
Try not “bypass” their disappointment by trying to make them feel better. Allow them to feel their disappointment without interfering.
Stick to your guns. If your child throws a fit because they don’t want to leave the party, don’t pander to them by pleading with them or making them feel guilty.
Remember, their disappointment is normal. Override their protests, pick them up and take them home with firm determination.
Don’t try and “fix” the problem and see if your toddler can solve it themselves.
If your toddler is disappointed because they can’t do something, encourage your child to “try again”. Normalise disappointment by not reacting to their distress.
Make sure your child knows that you love them regardless of their successes or failures. It’s important that they do not grow up feeling that their disappointments also mean that they have let you down too.
Never punish your child for a negative reaction to disappointment. Your child has a right to negative emotions. While it can be hard to see your child upset, remember to let them vent and have a good cry to move through the challenging situation on their own.
Be solution-oriented and give your toddler an opportunity to make a decision. For example, if your child feels disappointed about being unable to do something they want, ask them to come up with an alternative. For example, if their favourite toy store is closed, try saying “we can’t go to the toy store right now, but what toy would you like to play with?” or “would you like to visit the toy store tomorrow morning or afternoon?”

Is there emotional value in disappointing my toddler?

Unii answers this guilt-inducing question from parents.