My kid had to deal with her first big loss yesterday; she failed a test at school. Not only that, but it was a test that she thought she had aced, so it was a double shock.
She didn’t take it well.
No, she was pretty upset, and there were many factors as to why she was so mad. Embarrassment, feelings of inferiority, fear that she would fail her class, fear that she would fail the whole year, fear the would have to repeat the grade, and just a general disappointment in herself. All hard things for a kid to deal with, but they are things that a kid has to learn to deal with. My approach was to let her be upset and get all of that pent-up anger out of her system.
My grandfather used to say that when you get mad, you should give yourself a day to wallow in it, but then you have to start making changes in the morning. It’s generally worked for me. Some losses are harder than others. Instead of a day, in some situations I needed days, weeks, even a month. Anger can tell you many things – and when I listen to why I’m angry, it tells me what changes I need to make.
That might be too much for the kid to dwell on for right now.
I thought it best to help her try to forgive herself, relax enough to get some sleep, and then discover that tomorrow did arrive in the morning, and it all wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. As long as you have a tomorrow, you always have a chance to make it better.
