Walking through Disappointment with Our Kids Podcast Episode

It’s hard to see somebody that you care about experience painful emotions or painful experiences. And that automatically puts you in a position of wanting to try to just make the pain go away. But then generally what that leads to at a practical level is offering solutions that bring temporary relief, but actually set them up for really unhealthy, unhelpful ways of dealing with difficulties.

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. It’s great as always to have you along. Walking through disappointment with our Kids is the topic today. And to have that conversation, I’ve got Brian Sutter here in the studio with me.

Let’s talk about disappointment. Let’s get into what that actually could look like. And I think for parents, we see it as very relevant. You know, things from being mistreated, unhappy circumstances. Sometimes they’re unhappy with themselves, and that is painful failure to excel at something, failure to succeed at something, losing a job, losing a spouse, it runs the gamut of the age of that child too.

Exactly, yep. From small issues to mature issues. Yeah. But they’re all painful and disappointing. Exactly, and it’s a universal experience at one level or another as we walk besides kids or adults. I mean, we experience disappointment. I heard this quote that a parent is as happy as their least happy child.

And that really rang true to me that our own well-being as parents is very often tied to the well-being of our kids. For sure. As we love and care for our kids and we experience them going through things that are painful, it’s going to have an impact on us. But what exactly that should look like is, is tricky.

If I want to be helpful in walking through disappointment, part of that’s going to be recognizing my own disappointment and being able to walk through disappointment well if I’m going to be as much use as I’d like to in walking beside kids. Yeah, speak to this idea of being careful not to service our pain when we are working with our children.

Well, I think if nothing else, it’s just a really good question to ask. Why am I doing what I’m doing? And in many ways, some of the things we do as parents is because of our own insecurities or our own pain, and we’re trying to calm that down rather than thinking about what’s actually going to be helpful for them? And that might mean their discomfort, their disappointment stays longer, which will be more painful for us, but is actually going to be more beneficial for them. We’ll try to put an example to this. I might have the mindset that says, my child’s not going to fail a class. Right. Well, all of a sudden, that pain is now mine. This is about me rather than walking through this disappointing educational experience with them. And I think an example of that would be, so when my third-grade daughter takes her pumpkin project into the school, you can get a sense that maybe not all the kids did those pumpkins.

That’s so funny because I think every parent with their oldest child has this story. For me, it was taking the project to the fair. Sure. I read the description like Josh was supposed to do this thing, you know what I mean?

But when I got there, somehow, I had this inkling. But that’s so funny. And it’s interesting to see even though you might be parenting a 17-year-old, to recognize that what we do at their third-grade pumpkin project is setting the trajectory and just being thoughtful about that.

Because at some point, they’re going to get into the arena where we can’t do it for them. And if they haven’t dealt with coming in third at the pumpkin contest, this is going to be a lot harder. But what I see this really speaking to, Brian, is this concept that there needs to be healthy separation between who they are and who I am. Who is who?

How do we make sure that we don’t take on what is theirs in a way that’s beyond what we ought to? That we are separate, and we need to let them have their emotions and we can have our emotions, and we can come beside them in that. But also, just to be careful that it doesn’t become ours when it isn’t. Or that what we’re modeling there is that they’re supposed to take on what is ours.

And that gets backwards too, if that’s what they feel like. If mom’s taking care of all of my emotions or dad’s taking care of all my emotions, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do with them. If we have this idea where we don’t have healthy separation between us, perhaps they might say, I’m not going to raise this disappointment because I know what this is going to do to mom.

Exactly. And I think in some ways, that’s probably going to naturally cross a child’s mind in and of itself. But if they can register that and if that can be shared, or that can be something we have in our minds and we can speak into that, it just sets up a healthier dynamic as far as a possibility.

Whereas this idea here that we’re referring to that we want to stay away from in counseling we would call enmeshment, where two separate people become one in a way that’s unhealthy and, like we talked about earlier, you’re going to have impact on each other, but we just want to be careful that when one is really struggling, we can feel that, but we can also be present to be a help that they don’t have to protect us from what’s hard for them.

So, you’ve just illustrated that intermediate space because there’s another ditch on the other side of being completely unattached or detached. Yes. Or out to lunch. Which, I might say, sometimes is a way that we handle our own pain. Oh, for sure. So, we have detachment on one side and enmeshment on the other side.

Is that a good way to see it? Yep. So, you painted this picture of having an appropriate interaction that doesn’t take it on, but yet receives it. You’re going to find yourself on either side of that. But even if that can just be a mindset of, I wonder if I am taking this on too much or am I too detached?

Those can just be helpful questions that keep us in between the lines, if you will. No, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. So that I think brings together this idea of looking inward before we look outward. So, now we’re going to go to this outward piece of helping our kids in their place of disappointment.

Life is full of disappointment. Yeah, and that’s a hard reality, but I think it’s a really important reality that we come to terms with, and we help our kids come to terms with, that the goal isn’t that you won’t have disappointment or difficulty, the goal is to be able to recognize it and learn how to walk through it well.

And I think this picture brings to mind this idea that the Lord doesn’t promise really straight, narrow, easy paths. He wants to give us the kind of feet that help us walk through the difficult paths that are there. And that’s the reality of the world we live in.

We have been equipped. But perhaps those skills need to be honed and grown and matured to walk through disappointment as much as we would like to do away with disappointment. It sees difficulty as an opportunity. We would observe, I think, that those who have gone through a lot of disappointment or difficulty, when that’s done really well, they come out as the most amazing, beautiful, strong, God honoring individuals.

Now, that’s not always the end of the story, but there is so much potential for growth in that. And it doesn’t mean that we wish that or want that, but, you know, it does have the opportunity to generate a lot of growth and maturity. I think that even more just substantiates the need here to how do we do this well with our kids, so that this can be a moment that brings about a great deal of healing and health.

And so, I think we want to know what it is that we should not be doing. So, we promised do’s and don’ts. Alright, be careful not to do the following things. The reality is you’re going to miss it a lot of times. But don’t miss it that your kid is disappointed.

You know what, honestly, sometimes, hey, knucklehead, they’re disappointed. Right. You know what I’m saying? Oh, yes. And part of what’s so hard about that is because the things that are disappointing to them seem so small, especially when they’re young. It’s just like, what?

And so therefore it’s so easy to miss that when this friend doesn’t text them back, or this project doesn’t go the way that they thought it was going to go, or the Sunday school event got cancelled, or whatever those things are. These are barely on our radar, but these are huge things in their day to day lives.

As you gave that example, Brian, I had to think of what I expect of God, you know what I mean? Sure. And that is a part of my God frame, and I think we’ll even talk about that later, is that he cares about the little stuff. Yes. And I think that’s a great point even in modeling, oh, that matters to you is starting to create that picture of, oh, even somebody who’s infinitely bigger than me, maybe could care about this thing that has to be peanuts in his world.

Yeah. That’s good. I think one of our natural tendencies when a child experiences an emotion is to get in there and say, okay, are you supposed to be feeling this or not? And then trying to convince them, no, you shouldn’t feel this. You ought to feel this. And it’s just that emotions really don’t work that way.

You know, if we could all be happy, and we could flip that switch, we would all do that. Like, none of us enjoy feeling sad or disappointed. If we could feel happy all the time, and we could force that to happen, we would sure do that. And sometimes we expect that for our kids. Oh, you’re not supposed to feel this, you’re not supposed to feel that let’s just get over here.

And they just don’t work that way, so we’re putting them in a position to try to bring about something that, one, isn’t even feasible, and two, may not even be helpful. That is good. Something that Craig Stickling taught me, as we were working through some disappointment with one of our children, and he was helping. He didn’t talk them out of the feeling, but he did help them see the size that feeling should be.

How sad should we be? This is really sad. This is sad, and you should be sad. Let’s scale the sadness. Yes. And the reality with emotions is that they’re just going to show up sometimes and not even have a reason. So, when sometimes they show up and there’s not a direct reason, you wake up and you’re just kind of sad. If you’re talking them out of it, there’s no space for what to do with that. Whereas it’s like, oh, okay, you feel sad. Okay. How do we just acknowledge that? And you can feel sad, and you can still be wise, you can still make wise decisions, and let’s focus on that, and we’ll see if maybe something comes together, why it’s there, and if not, I bet it’ll just dissipate and change in time.

Yeah, exactly. It’s hard to see somebody you care about experience painful emotions or painful experiences. And that automatically puts you in a position of wanting to try to just make the pain go away. But then generally what that leads to on a practical level is offering solutions that bring temporary relief but actually set them up for really unhealthy, unhelpful ways of dealing with difficulties. So, what, for example, might that look like today? It often looks like giving a child a screen in the midst of their disappointment. Or certain kinds of foods, like sugars, like those would be for young kids, those would be very common ways that we use to rescue our kids from feelings.

There’s something, I think, really profound, too, about how we assess a situation based on their feelings. So, if the sadness, for example, is really painful to sit with, if they could just not be sad or be happy, then we’re all good. Right. We’re all good. It’s almost like that will fix the situation.

It doesn’t. No, it doesn’t. No. It helps bring temporary relief, but I think in the long term, it moves us out of helping them grow and into more just keeping them stunted that the next time they face a similar situation or a more difficult situation, their only option is going to be to fix the books.

Because they don’t know how to just be sad and trust that if they can just be there, eventually that’ll pass, and they’ll be able to move into helpful behavior that will help in the growth piece. We don’t want to really put emotions in this is bad category versus good category. But we want to see emotions as something God has given, and some are comfortable, some are not comfortable, but a lot of times, they are giving information to us and there’s helpful information if we’re willing to explore what might be behind them. And if we don’t make space for the uncomfortable emotions then it’s really hard for them to move into and enjoy the pleasant emotions. We’re kind of saying, these emotions are bad, we have to stay away from them while accidentally we’re cutting them off from some of these good emotions, too.

Yeah. So, when disappointments arise, we really have a great classroom to grow as emotional human beings. Yeah, right. And I think as we grow as emotional human beings, that contributes to flourishing and being able to actually experience the sorts of things we want to experience, and they want to experience emotionally.

If we can get healthy in that space and learn how to operate in this emotional world well, that actually helps expand the possibilities. Yeah, that’s good. Let’s move along then to things to do. Yes. So, it’s not just about not doing some things. So, let’s talk about how we help them. How do we help them do this?

Really, in many ways, you’re just helping them walk through grief. You’re helping them walk through the sadness that comes along with an expectation that’s not met, whatever that is. And that is, if we can help them recognize the emotion, if we can help validate the emotion of, oh, okay, that makes sense, and be a partner that’s walking beside them, that’s walked down this road many times on other topics will put them in a much better position to walk through it.

Very often I interpret my emotions to say something different. For example, disappointment telling me that I’m bad, or disappointment telling me that I’m a failure and will never turn out to be anything. Those things are very gripping. But really what you’re doing, you’re pivoting in this and saying, oh no, your sadness is telling you to grieve, let’s do that.

Say a bit about what we mean by grief, then what’s the goal of grief? Well, I think that the goal of grief, what it’s really trying to communicate, generally speaking, is that there’s been a loss. There’s been something that hasn’t gone the way that you’d hoped. And so, if that’s the case, then if we can identify what that is, and walk through it, and put what I would call helpful meaning to it. Make sense out of it in a way that is consistent with the biblical worldview and is consistent with them being created in the image of God and so on and so forth.

I think that’s going to put them in a really helpful position. And then I think too, on the other side, you can also start to talk through, okay, grief or disappointment comes almost always because of an unmet expectation. So, let’s think about that situation and were your expectations maybe out of line with what was actually likely to happen?

And if so, then you have to move into that area of, okay, let’s make sure our expectations are close to what is likely to be reality. Because the distance between reality and your expectation is disappointment. Exactly. The further those things get apart, the more disappointment you’re going to experience.

That’s really good. And this idea of making meaning, I think, is what you said. The meaning they make has a lot to do with helping them manage stories. Because I think God’s created us as meaning-making beings. That’s what we do. It’s part of being intellectual creatures that are able to think.

If we can help our kids recognize the difference between what’s actually happened, the event, whatever it would be, those three would be good examples of events, the emotions that they experience, and then the story is separate. The story is the meaning that we’re putting to these things. And we want to make sure the story is aligned with what we would say is biblically true. That’s a tricky thing to do, especially if you don’t identify it as a story, because as we walk through life, we assume story is just an event.

We merge those two, and if we can help our kids start to piece those apart, then they can work on the story. And I’m making meaning of something that very much circles closely to their identity. Love to hear your thoughts on this idea of helping them with their own identity.

Because I think this is actually like a zoomed in aspect of their story. But I think it’s a zoomed in aspect that’s really important for us to highlight. And it’s the story that says, what does this mean about me? Okay. And I think that’s such an important question for us as caretakers or parents to have in mind as our kids work through things or experience life.

Helping them sort through what this means about me in a way that’s true is so important. Because that’s not what they’re going to naturally do. And I think if we can even do it proactively, that can be really powerful. If we see something coming up, let’s say they’ve got a test tomorrow on Friday, and we know this is a big deal, and already my child wonders about whether he is smart.

Okay, so we, we know that’s in the background. And they’re going to have this test and we go up to them Thursday night or Friday morning and say, I know you’ve got that test coming up, but I want you to know, I love you, and who you are as a person doesn’t shift one iota whether you get an A or a B or if you totally fail this. You are welcome here, you are loved by your dad or your mom, whoever’s communicating that, and just trying to speak into that in a proactive way, would be just an example. Because those are the sort of moments that can have a significant impact in that little mind that’s trying to figure out, what does this mean about me?

I think that is excellent. God image is at a crisis in a moment of disappointment, isn’t it? I mean, I have heard statements like, why did God? And why doesn’t God? And that’s not fair. You know what I’m saying? Oh, yeah. They’re raising some really big things, so, I think disappointment is a place where faith can be founded, or faith can really fail.

Yeah. No question. You know, this too, much like the identity piece, is a really important aspect of the stories piece. What does this mean about God? What does this mean about who he is? And his view of me and his care towards me. And that comes right into center focus as we walk through disappointments and our kids walk through disappointments.

Yeah. And we can be sure, whatever their disappointment is that they’re walking through today, there’ll be another disappointment down the road that’s likely to be more difficult. So, if we can keep this view, that question in mind, that’s part of what their little mind is going to be wrestling through, whether they’re 25 or 5.

To be able to say, what does that look like? What’s the story that I’m having about God? Does that align with the actual event? Does that align with Scripture, how God describes himself to be in the Scripture? And if not, then to make space for the emotions of, that’s really confusing, or that’s really disappointing. And then we can say, you know what, I’ve been there.

And that goes back to modeling, or we can say, you know what, I think David’s been there. Let’s read this Psalm together. See how he didn’t know how to make sense out of this either, but he clung to God. I don’t know where else to turn, and I don’t know how else to view you, God, but this doesn’t make any sense to me.

It seems like those Scriptures are very honest about that, and I think if we can allow for that, and even in this space, if we can be proactive in trying to build up what the view of God is in Scripture before the storm hits, I think that’s really helpful too, and probably takes us back to not wanting to be detached or enmeshed. We want to be in this sweet place of like, okay, we care, and we’re connected and we’re aware of what’s going on. And that then allows us to be proactive. I have found trying to help my children lament has been a good exercise and how I do that and thinking that through and sometimes you have to model it and you have to do it with them.

Yeah. And learn together in that. And that comes back to being able to manage our own disappointment well. Like we talked about the front end, if it’s not safe for them, if they don’t think Dad is able to hear what I have to say and is able to not just totally melt down and go into a hole or get really angry and frustrated, then they’re not going to be able to do that.

And then they’re left trying to sort through those stories themselves. I don’t think we want to do that if we can avoid it. I think in the midst of all of this if there’s anybody that has reason to be hopeful, it’s us as followers of Christ that we know the end of the story, and we can be hopeful as we walk beside them, but then ultimately just in the big picture of things that there is always hope and to be able to champion that.

We have to be good, I think, too, at knowing when circumstantial hope is hope at all. Sure. And that non-circumstantial hope is always present in Christ. So, for example, a lot of the disappointment that I want to say to my kid is, well, next time, or it won’t happen again. Or this is what we’ll do so it doesn’t happen again.

Those are all circumstantial things and there’s a good place for that. That’s good stuff to do and grow as a human being. But there are many things I cannot guarantee. So, you have to have that circumstantial hope accompanied or almost carried by a non-circumstantial hope which has got to have God all over it. Oh, absolutely. And I think that’s where one of the things we as parents often do, rightfully so, is we say, you know what, it’s going to be okay. But I think we have to define what we mean by that. Because we don’t mean that the circumstances are going to turn out the way that we’d like to.

What we’re saying is, Even if the circumstances don’t turn out, it’s going to be okay because of a deeper reason that we know who is in control, we know who’s in charge, and from that standpoint, it will be okay, but sometimes if we don’t explain that, they think, oh, well, okay, that means it’s going to turn out, and then it doesn’t, and then we’re liars.

You know? Yeah. And that’s not even what we meant. Right. But according to their script, and according to what they understood, it didn’t come to pass. Walking through disappointment with our kids can be a very painful thing to do, and we respect that in all of our listeners, and we trust and hope that this address of the topic is, is hopeful and also helpful.

Thanks for being on. Goodbye.