Summer is ending and school is starting or just around the corner. Regardless of age, the early days of school are ripe with the potential for disappointment. They don’t get their favorite teacher. Their best friend moved away over the summer. The preschool changed the brand of crackers offered for snack time. The problem may seem big or small to you, but the question here on Elephant Mamas is what are you going to do about it?

I have a proposal: Do nothing.

Recent events in my community have me thinking a lot about destructive choices kids make later in life and what leads them to this point. There is not a one-size-fits-all answer, but it does make me think about choices I am making as a parent. Even if I’m able to go to the school and demand a new teacher, is that helping my child? If I think they have too much homework, is my opinion the only one that matters?

What if all the helicopter parenting of our generation is leading to kids who grow up not knowing how to deal with big disappointment because they never learned to face the little ones? Someone once told me that I shouldn’t let my kids go to college out of state because it’s too hard to fix class schedule problems with the Registrar over the phone. I don’t know about you, but my parents had absolutely zero input on my school schedule once I reached that age! And I don’t plan to either.

You know your kids best and know when they can advocate for themselves and when they need you to step in. I just know there are times when my kids haven’t made the team they wanted, received the grade they expected, or gone to bed without dinner on a school trip because they didn’t like the food. None of these events made them perish, but I hope it built a slightly thicker outer shell to protect them in the future.

What about you? What disappointments has your child face and how did you each handle it? Is there anything you’re planning to do differently this year than last since they are a year older?