Ask PSL: Why It’s So Important to Let Your Child Feel Sad or Disappointed
Posted By: Tina Wakefield
Category: Dealing with Kids' Emotions
Comments: 1
When I was younger my mother would regularly take to me to a nearby beach. We would normally spend some of that time walking along the beach, picking and choosing some things to inspect more closely as we went. One day I found a piece of seashell buried in the sand. I was expecting to discover that it was yet another fragment of a shell, but as I pulled on it, I felt resistance. When it became completely dislodged, I was shocked to see that it was huge and beautiful. I remember being so excited—in my 7-year-old mind I tied the uniqueness of my ocean treasure to me being special in some way. I took it home and painted it blue and put the date on the bottom corner. Show-and-tell time came at school, and I was sure my prized object would elicit many ooh’s and ahh’s from my classmates; yet, as I placed it on my desk in preparation to share it, some boys started horsing around and bumped into my desk. In an instant, my prized shell became like all the other fragmented shells on the beach. I cried and cried, and no amount of reassurance made me feel better.
