Teaching Kids about Disappointment (Or, Why I’m Not Going on the Kindergarten Field Trip)

My son’s kindergarten field trip is coming up this week and I am sad to say I won’t be going. The kids will be visiting a historical sight here in northern Virginia, and the class is allowed to take 4 parent chaperones along for the adventure.

In order to make it fair for all parents in the class, the teachers awarded these chaperone slots by lottery. All parents who wanted to attend could put their names in the hat, and the kids drew names out during class to select the chaperones randomly.

I — unfortunately — was not selected.

Of course, my 6-year-old is convinced that other kids cheated when they drew the names. He’s accused more than one of his classmates of looking at the slips before drawing from the hat. It just doesn’t feel fair that his own mom wasn’t selected. It is hard for kids to handle disappointment. And he’s predisposed (perhaps by his stage of development) to assume any disappointment he suffers must be someone else’s fault.

So he took it kind of hard. Hard enough that I got a nice email from his teacher letting me know how sorry she was that my name wasn’t drawn and ensuring me the random selection was random (which I don’t doubt for a second).

Other parents have told me I should ask permission to drive my own vehicle so I can go on the trip, but I’ve decided against that. As much as I want to share this special day with my son, this seems like a perfect opportunity to help my son learn to handle disappointment by modeling the graceful acceptance of disappointment. Trust me when I say everyone at our house (including me!) could use more practice at that.

I talked up the good things about the other mothers who are going along as chaperones and encouraged my son to talk to one of them if he has questions or needs help. And I told him I’ll be eager to hear all about George Mason’s estate — Gunston Hall — when I pick him up after school. Talking about the situation in a positive way gives my son permission to move past disappointment and enjoy the field trip.

While he’s learning about life in colonial America and the Declaration of Independence, my son will be learning a bigger, more important lesson on this year’s kindergarten excursion. He’ll be learning first hand that we don’t always get what we want. But we always decide how to respond.

I’m choosing to let life be my child’s teacher instead of fixing things myself. Now that’s Detachment Parenting in action.

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