Why We Don’t Need to Rescue Our Kids From Disappointment

By Rebecca Horch, BACYC, CPC

Reading Time: 9 minutes

The other day I was driving my daughter home from a basketball game. Although her team had won, she did not play her best, and she knew it. 

As I watched from the stands, I was wincing at the missed layups and sloppy fouls. I know how well she can play. I also know how hard she is on herself. Although she is an incredible athlete (more competitive than I can even understand) I also know that she’s a perfectionist and beats herself up when she doesn’t live up to her own standards.

She plays at a pretty high level for a middle schooler, and she can tell the difference between facing a strong team and having an off game. And unfortunately, this was an off game. I knew the ride home would be interesting, to say the least. 

When we got in the car, I asked what I always ask.

“How do you feel about the game?” 

Right away she said, “I hate how I played. Ugh. I was so bad. I kept getting crowded at the hoop and couldn’t throw the ball out or get a layup. I had so many missed shots. I’m so mad at myself.” 

You would think I’d be better at this by now. But my immediate instinct, even though I know it is not the best way to handle it, was to FIX IT. 

Just like most parents, of course there is a part of me that never wants my kids to feel bad about themselves. That part wants to jump in and make everything easier. It wants to reassure, to reframe, to smooth it all over as quickly as possible. And that part of me got really loud and very insistent very quickly. 

“Say something. Help her. Make this better. What is wrong with you woman?! Your daughter is SUFFERING.” (This part can also be a little dramatic at times) 

But after a lot of personal healing, plus 13 years of mothering, there is another part of me now. A steadier one. A version of me that trusts her more than that. That trusts myself more than that. This part knows that difficult feelings are not always dangerous. In fact, they are often pretty important. This part knows I do not have to rush in just because something feels uncomfortable. 

So I took a breath. “Yeah, that wasn’t your best game, hey? Do you want to talk about it?” 

She’s almost 13, so the answer was short and sweet. I could almost hear the eye roll when she said, “No. Not really.” 

I could feel the pull again; that urge to step in. I wanted to fill the silence and make sure she knew how amazing she is. I wanted to lie and tell her she played great, and she was overthinking it. I just wanted to make her feel better. I know this awful feeling so well and it is a punch in the gut knowing my kid was feeling it in this moment.

But I stayed quiet. I gave her space to sit in it. 

After a couple of minutes I could see it on her face. She was deep in her head. Scrunched up. Fighting herself. Her internal narrative of self-blame and criticism was getting really loud.

I let her sit in the disappointment, but I wasn’t going to let her sit alone with a voice that attacked who she is. There’s a difference between rescuing and coaching. Rescuing jumps in to save, coaching helps build the skills to navigate these difficult moments. 

So, I reached over, squeezed her shoulder, and said, “It must really suck to have a game like that. To play worse than you know you can. That’s so frustrating.” She looked at me. She knows what I’m doing. She has had me as her mom her whole life. 

“I’m fine,” she said, sitting up straighter, very 13. 

“Okay,” I said. “It’s okay if you’re fine. It’s also okay if you’re not. But can I say one thing and then I’ll shut up? I promise.” 

“Fine.” 

“If you are being really hard on yourself up there in your head, try to keep it about the basketball. The missed shots and the plays you would redo. Don’t let that critical voice go after your character. Your character played a great game. She cheered for her team, supported her teammates, handled personal disappointment really well without making the whole game about herself, had great sportsmanship in the face of a lot of frustration. She does not deserve to be attacked. It is fair to think about how you want to play stronger and what you would do differently next time. It’s okay to regret parts of the game. It’s not okay to turn it into something about who you are as a person. Got it?” 

I wish I could say we had a deep, connecting heart to heart after that. That she opened up and cried and we sat in the driveway hugging. But mothers can dream. 

Instead I got a quiet “Yeah okay.” And, “I just know I could have played much better.” 

But it was a bit softer this time. Less sharp around the edges. I squeezed her knee and said, “I know babe. I love you,” and left it there. 

A couple of hours later she was back to herself. She could tell her brothers and dad how the game had gone without curling into a ball of shame. It was just a bad game. Like every athlete has a hundred times over. Not a verdict on who she is as a person.

This lesson is one I’m faced with again and again as a parent. Sometimes our love for our kids and our desire for them to be happy overpowers the life experiences they actually need to learn. And I’m sorry to tell you, but it doesn’t seem to get any easier to hold back when every instinct says jump in.

Sometimes we are tempted to make them feel better. Other times we swing the other way and correct them too quickly, often with our own frustration mixed in. We get angry at the tantrum, snap at the attitude, or even try to shut it down. But whether we are soothing too fast or correcting too fast, the root is often the same. We ourselves are uncomfortable with the feeling in front of us. And if we are honest, we are uncomfortable with that feeling in ourselves. So we try to fix it. And that’s where we have to pause and reconnect with the part of us that trusts we’ll all be okay, that trusts this is all “figureoutable.” From there, we can remind ourselves:

This feeling doesn’t need fixing. 

This isn’t about trying to toughen them up or follow some new parenting trend. It’s about recognizing that learning to sit with disappointment without being rescued is part of how a person becomes rooted in themselves. This is where resilience begins. It’s where confidence and self-trust are formed. It’s where empathy grows. This is essential to our development as human beings. We have to learn how to tolerate difficult emotions and understand the difference between what is truly unsafe and what is simply uncomfortable. That process builds neurological flexibility. It teaches the brain that discomfort is not danger, that feelings can rise and fall without overwhelming us. 

When we rush in to erase the discomfort, even with good intentions, we unintentionally send the message that the feeling itself is too much. That frustration or failure needs to be corrected immediately. That it cannot be tolerated. 

But when we allow the feeling to be what it is, while sitting beside our kids in it, something really important happens. They feel the frustration. And then they survive it. They come back to themselves. They learn that a hard moment is not the same thing as being a bad person. And maybe just as important, they learn that someone who loves them will sit with them in the hard feeling without trying to change them. 

Many parents missed this growing up. They weren’t taught how to deal with disappointment because they were isolated, invalidated, or punished for those feelings in the first place. And that matters. But it is different when we are not alone in our hard emotions. When someone safe stays with us, without rescuing us, our nervous system learns something new. We learn we can tolerate the feeling. We learn we are not bad or broken because we struggle. And over time, we begin to hold ourselves with more kindness and steadiness. 

This kind of resilience doesn’t grow with lectures or life changing “ah-ha” moments. It is built in small car rides home from ordinary middle school basketball games. 

This doesn’t mean we never guide or coach or offer perspective. Of course we do. That’s part of our job. It simply means we don’t rush to remove the very thing that makes the lesson meaningful. Our nervous system has to experience safety inside the discomfort for those teaching moments to actually settle in. Otherwise, the words may land in the head but they never reach the heart or body where it can really be believed and integrated.

And if this feels hard, that’s because it probably is. Many of us are still learning how to sit with our own “missed layups” without attacking ourselves. But the more we practice that in our own lives, the more authentically we can offer it to our kids.

I’ll leave you here with a quote from someone who probably knows what he’s talking about when it comes to this kind of thing. Let it be a reminder for you the next time you’re tempted to jump in and make that hard feeling disappear for someone you love:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed” – Michael Jordan

Until next time,
Rebecca

Rebecca Horch( BACYC, CPC )

Rebecca strives to support others in building resilience, self-compassion, connected relationships and self-awareness. She loves to work with people who are ready for the hard work of inner growth and is passionate about helping others tap into their intuitive gifts and use them in this world.

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