Every parent has been there. A day or two before Christmas, someone asks their child what gift is on the top of their list, and the child says something completely different from what they said all the previous times they’d been asked.
The panicked parent then has two choices. The first is to scramble and spend what will probably be many hours trying to find the newly-requested gift. This, in fact, is the entire plot of the film “Jingle All The Way,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad as fathers racing to find “Turbo Man” action figures for their sons. Hijinks ensue, culminating in jetpack flights and a police chase (really).
Both men would have been spared so much stress if they had just come to terms with their child not getting everything on their Christmas wish list. Which is, in fact, the second option.
No one wants to disappoint their child, ever, but we especially don’t want to disappoint them on what is supposed to be the most magical day of the year. And disappointing our children, obviously, should never be the goal. But inevitably, there will be curveballs: the last-minute change in the requested gift, an impossible ask for something like a live animal, or a child who believes there’s no need to express what they want because surely Santa will know. And inevitably, despite our best efforts, these curveballs will lead to disappointment.
And that’s OK. It’s maybe even good for the child’s development.
As child and adolescent psychotherapist Katie Hurley writes for PBS, “Disappointment, as it turns out, can be a valuable teaching tool when it comes to emotional development.” She explains, “When children learn that they have what it takes to work through the difficult feelings caused by disappointing situations, they build resilience and coping skills. This empowers them to recover from setbacks, solve problems independently, and figure out how to process negative emotions.”
But learning how to process negative emotions isn’t always going to look pretty. Especially when it happens to smaller children who haven’t yet developed a filter or learned to fake enthusiasm. And especially when it’s around lots of other people, like extended family on Christmas. My family’s lore includes the story of a 3-year-old who, after opening a gift from a relative, exclaimed “Not clothes!” and threw themselves dramatically on the floor. While it’s one of our favorite anecdotes now, I’m sure it was mortifying for my parents at the time.
Sometimes our children’s response to disappointment, be it a tantrum or pouting, leads to parents’ disappointment that their child is not more grateful and a sense of embarrassment. But, Hurley explains, managing disappointment is not a skill children can immediately learn. “This isn’t a skill that kids can learn in a day,” she writes. “And while tantrums might feel embarrassing or overwhelming in the moment, we all need to vent at times.”
I know the last thing I want to do when my child is acting less than grateful is give them space to vent. And I may or may not have STRONGLY expressed my disappointment in what I thought was ungrateful behavior from one of my children as recently as this week. Because, I thought, how else will they learn that a meltdown is not appropriate? But Hurley advises parents to respond calmly in order to model healthy coping strategies. She also advises being a guide, not a fixer, by giving children space to feel their strong emotions, asking them questions that will allow them to process those emotions (like “what do you wish would happen?” and “what can be done differently next time?”) and speaking calmly to help them come back down to Earth.
She also advises working with children in advance to manage their expectations. This could mean explaining why getting a kitten for Christmas probably isn’t going to happen when half the family is allergic. It could mean explaining that it’s important to express what they want, instead of expecting mind reading, which is a skill I’m still working on in my late 30s. It might mean explaining that a list of 15 items is a bit unreasonable and helping them edit the requests down to one or two.
But managing expectations might be a tall order for a harried parent with a million things to do in December. And it’s probably a futile exercise when children are of the “Not clothes!” tantrum age. Despite all our best efforts to mitigate negative emotions, there will, at some point on some Christmas morning, be some disappointment — even, dare I say, among the grown-ups. There’s so much hype and expectation around this one day that it’s almost impossible to avoid. And that’s OK.
Because life is full of a lot of disappointment. But that doesn’t mean life isn’t also great. And the sooner someone learns how to become familiar with feeling disappointed, and learns to manage that feeling and move on, the better.
We all want to make this season as magical as possible for our children. But if, or when, we fail to get them the perfect gift, we might ultimately be giving them the gift of better emotional regulation.
So when your kid suddenly announces on Dec. 23 that they’re hoping for a toy you’ve never heard of and has been sold out since October, rest assured that they’ll be OK without it. And ultimately, maybe even a better person for the experience.