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Help...How do I deal with my son's hurt feelings?

"Hello,

I am hoping for some useful advice.  My 2.5 year old son Ben is a very sweet and sensitive kid.  He tends to be more of a follower than a leader at this stage.  The other day while at a friends' house, Ben and 2 other boys (ages 3 and 4) were playing in the yard.  They were playing quite well when all of a sudden the 3 year old yelled at my son, "I don't want to play with you!!" and said he only wanted to play with the other boy.  Ben looked crushed (and it took every ounce of strength for me to hold back my own tears!).  Ben asked the boy why he didn't want to play with him.  I was watching this all take place and felt extremely hurt and very confused.  I told the boys that it's too bad they didn't want to play with Ben because he is so much fun to play with and tried not to make a big deal out of it.  I tried to distract Ben by asking him if he wanted to play ball with me instead.  It broke my heart to see Ben get left out (I remember feeling like that as a child and it hurts!).  How should I handle situations like this and teach my son how to handle himself and his hurt feelings?

Any advice is very welcome!

Thanks,

J"

Hello J

I quite understand how difficult it is for a mom to stand by and see her son hurt.  I remember when my eldest son was two and wanted to play in the park with the 'big boys', who of course, weren't interested.  Having said that, children learn to cope based on how we deal with disappointment.  If you take disappointment in stride, then your child will too.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if during your son's normal and brief moment of 'why don't they want to play' that your son looked over at you to see your reaction.  What he saw will have largely determined his response, so you were quite right to suggest it was no big deal and simply move on.

If there is a natural moment that arises where he wants to talk about the experience, by all means listen and encourage him to talk but make sure you do it in an upbeat way that focuses less on the problem and more on what else he could do in terms of playing something different or perhaps other friends he could play with later.

You can't, however hard you try, shield your child from these experiences, nor should you.  Instead, it's important to give him the skills to cope and help him to become a resilient human being.  So how do you do that?  Well much of what we go through in life is about perception.  How we perceive events and what we expect from them.  If we expect every word said in haste to create hurt feelings then that what we will get.

We can't know what made the 3 year old not want to play nor can we control him or his reaction.  What you can control is Ben's perception of the incident which will set the stage for how he perceives future events.  Perhaps the child was tired and kind of grumpy (we all have off days).  Perhaps he wanted to play with the older boy for a bit (his choice) as the older boy was doing something more interesting to him.  We could hope for a kinder reaction but children are visceral and tend to say what they think.  The way the 3 year old determined the play date was over was completely normal for that age yet it doesn't have to be about rejecting Ben.   Looking at the event as though it is purely about  rejection will skewer Ben's perception of the incident and perhaps even give him hurt feelings when he could have simply dismissed it.

There will be moments of major hurt in his life when he will need you to explain the experience and help him get past it.  There will also be moments when the hurt is momentary and best ignored.  I think the above was one of them.

Best of luck and all the best to you and your family.

Annie

Date Entered: 2009-07-13 13:08:53.0
Date Last Modified: 2009-07-13 21:58:26.0

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