It was the end of three incredibly hectic (if you asked the parents), incredibly fun (if you asked the kids) hours at my daughter's school's Fall festival. The last activity before we all got to escape the jam-packed, deafening space with our cake-walk and ring-toss booty? The reveal of the night's raffle winners. In an instant, a bunch of sugared-up kids who were previously having the night of their lives started howling with sadness as they saw their names weren't listed among the winners.
I was one of the lucky ones; my daughter won a private lunch with her teacher, and seeing her name on the board meant we got to walk out of the school smiling. The year before, when she came up empty-handed, her tears flowed like the drinks every parent planned to pour themselves the minute they got home. (If you've ever attended an event with over 300 hyped-up grade-schoolers, you get the need for a postevent cocktail or 12.)
The next day, at her soccer game, I started chatting with some of the fellow moms about what a kiddie buzzkill that raffle reveal had been and how disappointed so many of their children had felt leaving the event. "I told my kids just to expect they weren't going to win anything to try to prevent the meltdowns," one mom told us. "But then I felt like a bad mom for teaching them to automatically assume they'd be disappointed, and two of the three of them started bawling anyway."
Regardless of the outcome, I thought her tactic had merit. Why not give our kids a dose of reality before they face the best team in the baseball league or spend their whole piggy bank trying to win that cheap plush toy playing the claw game? And isn't realizing that sometimes the ice cream shop will be out of your favorite flavor or your park play date will get rained out just part of life? None of us can completely avoid life's little setbacks, so here's how to deal when your kid is the one who's feeling disappointed.