I could have rescued my daughter from disappointment. Here's why I didn't

A few weeks ago, my daughter came home from second grade, and she told me she wasn’t invited to her friend Samantha’s birthday party.I asked her if she knew how many kids were invited, and she told me twenty.

I was incensed.It was a big party, not a small, exclusive gathering, and my baby was left out.

I knew that, in that moment, I could do two things: acknowledge that being left out hurts, or pick up the phone and call Samantha’s mom to secure an invitation.I had to deliberately focus on the former and stop myself from instinctually choosing the latter because, these days, it seems like we are all defaulting to the phone call.The instinct is understandable.

We all hate watching our children suffer.But we need to remember that there is a clear difference between supporting our children through disappointment and making sure they never experience it.OUR KIDS AREN’T BROKEN.

WE NEED TO STOP TREATING EVERY STRUGGLE LIKE A DISORDERIt seems like we have lost our ability to tolerate ordinary childhood struggles.We pathologize and diagnose every negative experience—sadness becomes depression, meanness becomes bullying, and frustration becomes emotional dysregulation.

And each unsavory, undesirable part of life becomes an intervention target.Parents feel pressure to act rather than simply let life unfold.We must deliberately support our children without constantly rescuing them.

Help your child develop their own solutions.You can ask them what they could do next or what they might try differently next time, but remember that sometimes the best intervention is no intervention at all.  (iStock)But the reality is that life is messy and often uncomfortable, and not every negative emotion is evidence of a problem that requires us to intervene.

Emotional discomfort isn’t inherently dangerous, and, in fact, negative experiences can serve important developmental functions.Coping with adversity helps kids recognize what matters to them, adjust expectations, solv...