Promoting our children’s emotional health requires our full attention, but unfortunately, our own emotions can get in the way. As a result we make well-meaning inadvertent mistakes, like the following example: Lucy had promised to take her three-year-old son Ryan, to the zoo on Sunday, but due to an emergency, the zoo was closed for the day. “Ryan,” she says with much trepidation about letting down her little boy, “we can’t go to the zoo today because it is closed.” So Ryan howls and screams and rips off his clothes over his first disappointment. Lucy feels terrible about it and wants to “make it up to him.” “Oh, I am so sorry,” she says, “what can I do to make it up to you?” In her rush to rescue him from his suffering, she invites the neighborhood children in and throws a pizza party for them. Thus she alleviates her guilt over causing Ryan to suffer and at the same time she hopes to make him “feel better.” What did Ryan learn from his mother’s attempt to make him happy? He learned that when he is disappointed and he screams and cries, he’ll get a nice reward.

If Lucy could have thought in terms of childhood as basic training, she would have focused on helping Ryan deal with the pain of disappointment and being unnerved by the shock of it. He needs his mother’s compassion and support as he howls and screams and struggles his way through his intense feelings. By acknowledging, accepting, and respecting his feeling she enables Ryan to accept and respect his own feeling. This will ease him on to the first step of learning how to handle the tough times he will encounter in his life. If Ryan cannot see now what his mother is doing for him, he will surely know and appreciate it in the future.

You can avoid some disappointments by not making promises in the first place. It is wiser to make your plans conditional so that when they go awry, your children will be prepared for it. “If all’s well on Sunday, would you like to go to the zoo,” not “I promise to take you to the zoo on Sunday.” Then, it would be worthwhile to discuss Plan B along with Plan A. “If there is a reason we cannot go to the zoo, what else would you like to do on Sunday?”

Now it’s time to discuss Plan B – what to do instead. Here is another opportunity for you to help your children become self-reliant. Offer alternative activities for them to choose from so that they take some responsibility for a good outcome rather than relying on you to make the decision for them. In this way, their feeling of self-confidence will increase while their fear of disappointment decreases. Lucy’s calm response to Ryan’s distress modeled how to handle disappointment making it less frightening in the future.

Next time you feel the powerful mother-hen instinct to rescue your children from their unhappiness, try thinking basic training! It will help to temporarily detach emotionally by pretending for the moment that you are dealing with your neighbor’s child. If you disappointed your neighbor’s child I doubt that you would fall to pieces. You’d calmly let the child know that you couldn’t manage to carry out the plan you had made and then you’d arrange another date.

By detaching emotionally you attain objectivity that is not possible when you are concentrating on alleviating your children’s unhappiness and your own guilt. (Instead of feeling guilty be glad you have another opportunity to teach a vital skill.) We do not do our children any favors by putting them on the sideline of their own emotions. They are entitled to the full array of human emotions and your role as mentor will help them handle whatever comes their way.