In this episode of "Toddlers Made Easy," Dr. Cathryn Tobin explores how parents can help children develop resilience by confronting disappointment and building frustration tolerance. She opens with a personal story about allowing her 7‑year‑old daughter to try out for a boys’ soccer team, a decision that risked disappointment but ultimately led to a professional athletic career, illustrating the long‑term value of exposing kids to challenging emotions. Dr. Tobin then critiques common quick‑fix strategies—such as using food, distraction, or sugar‑coating—to soothe upset children, sharing a failed attempt to console a daughter after an art‑school rejection. She contrasts this with a more effective approach she used when her son lost a baseball game: validating his feelings, listening without trying to fix the situation, and encouraging reflection on future actions. Throughout, she emphasizes the importance of validating disappointment, allowing children to fully experience emotions without feeling alone, and guiding them to use frustration as a learning tool. The episode concludes with a brief, relatable anecdote about a grandmother’s response to a granddaughter’s crying at a playground, followed by concrete takeaway tips: validate the difficulty of disappointment, avoid minimizing emotions, stay present, and model long‑term perspective‑building. Dr. Tobin encourages listeners to observe their own reactions to child frustration and promises more parenting insights in future episodes.
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Welcome to Toddlers Made Easy. I'm Dr. Cathryn Tobin, and today we're going to be talking about a subject we all face but rarely talk about, and I'm going to share a little story to explain what I mean. At the age of 7, my daughter decided she wanted to try out for a boys' rep soccer team. Well, in that moment, I faced a dilemma. Should I protect my little girl from the likely disappointment of not making the team, or should I let her go to the tryout and just be there to support her regardless of the outcome? I believed it was really unlikely she would make the team, but I decided that if she was brave enough to take this risk at 7 years of age, I could certainly support her through whatever happened, but I really had to resist the urge to shield her from the disappointment and instead let her experience and navigate her emotions. Well, little did I know that she'd make the team and decades later be playing professional soccer and managing the complicated life of an athlete, which certainly ended up providing endless opportunities to learn to manage frustration as being an athlete is really loaded with challenges. So let's think about it. How can we help our kids manage difficult moments and even proactively increase frustration tolerance? These are powerful feelings that can be really hard to manage. Young kids need to vent just like adults do, but they lack the tools to do it other than having a meltdown. Most parents want to spare their kids grief and will try and distract them or sugarcoat things or buy them something to make them feel better quickly. And believe me, unfortunately, I'm really guilty of this. I remember when my other daughter didn't get into an art school she really desperately wanted to attend, and she had faced so many disappointments in a short period of time, and I really wanted to do something to help her feel better. So I decided to take the kids out for ice cream, even though I knew it wasn't the ideal way to handle the situation. I knew better, but I decided, well, my daughter really needs a little boost. On the way home, I got a parking ticket, and it felt like I was being punished for trying to manage my daughter's disappointment in a way that I knew was not great. And there are so many reasons why this was a lousy way of managing disappointment. Not the least of which was using food to manage disappointment. Now, when we give our kids the opportunity to feel their disappointment, we're allowing them to develop resilience. Now, to be fair, I'm going to present another example where I handled things better. I remember decades ago when my eldest son lost a baseball game. He dropped the bat on the ground. And he walked away with his head hanging. This was so unlike him that I held back my initial reaction, which was to focus on the dropped bat and the poor sportsmanship. But I realized that that fight-or-flight response gets triggered when kids experience frustration, so I knew this wasn't the time for a lesson. Instead, I empathized with him and I said, "Wow, losing that game must have really felt awful." And then I did one of the hardest things, which was I did nothing. I just sat and I listened. I didn't try and fix things. I didn't tell him it didn't matter or that it was no big deal. I showed my son that I was listening and I told him I thought he tried really hard. I showed him that while the feelings were big and hard to handle, he was not alone with them. When we let our kids experience the full emotions, they learn that difficult feelings come and go. I always try and teach my kids to use their frustration, and I'd ask them, "What do you plan to do differently next time?" So while we agree you shouldn't bend over backwards to shield your child from disappointment, on the other hand, you don't want to give your child the impression that they're alone with their discomfort. Having said all that, yesterday while I was out walking with my daughter and my granddaughter, who are only in town for 5 days, so I wanted them to be perfect 5 days. Well, my granddaughter started crying as we walked past the swings in the playground. My daughter was saying, no, Sloane, you can't go on the swings now. I'm sorry, sweetheart. I know it's really hard when you can't get something you want. Well, I won't tell you what I said as I've already embarrassed myself enough today, but I did the typical grandmother thing. So given how hard it is to let our kids experience frustration, let's finish off with some takeaway tips on how to build disappointment smarts. The first thing is always validate how disappointment is difficult. Next, don't avoid or minimize the emotions. Allow your child to feel all the feelings, just not feel them alone. Let your kids know you're there to help them with those feelings. Think about the same problem decades from now and the skills you want your adult child to have to manage whatever life throws their way. And I'm going to use another example here. For instance, let's say your 4-year-old doesn't get the gift he wanted for his birthday party. Well, you don't want to belittle him and just say he should be grateful for what he got, because when you look at the same scenario, let's say your 34-year-old gets passed over for a promotion, do you really want him to think, well, I shouldn't be upset, I'm lucky I have a job? No, you want to equip your child with the tools to use that frustration to forge ahead, to keep going, to ask questions about the situation. Now, for now, as a first step, I would just notice how you respond to your child's frustration and become more thoughtful about what you say and do. On a completely different note, I've got some really exciting news coming up, which I'm going to share with you next week. So have a great week and happy parenting.
