Suck it up.

Frustration. Despair. Jealousy. Grief. Powerlessness. Uncomfortable, unpleasant feelings are a fact of life. Everybody has them, including your kids. But some parents make the mistake of pretending they don’t exist, telling our kids to “suck it up” or “find their happy place.” And if you deny or suppress feelings, they just squirt out sideways, often in unpredictable and destructive ways. Today we talk about the sometimes perfectly understandable reason parents may want to gloss over their children’s negative feelings or jump in too quickly to “fix” it. And we offer techniques for helping your kid learn how to handle negative feelings head on, leading to resilient children who possess that much sought after quality: “grit.”