When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Unless of course, you’re being raised in America in 2015, in which case, just sit down and grab a glass because lemonade is on tap, in spite of a whole lot of un-squeezed lemons. But what happens when parents can’t design and control the playing field, and everyone can’t win a trophy?
The un-rejected, who have not been afforded the opportunity to develop the coping skills that are required to process rejection in a healthy and appropriate way, are being built up so high that it’s a very long way down and an even harder road back up.
Corralling our competitive nature and removing the concept of winners and losers, and adjusting the rules so that everyone can win and feel special, is an unsustainable model with real-world consequences. However, we are now seeing with the millennials, our chickens, who we’ve protected from rain, sleet, hail and snow so they would run free and thrive, are coming home to roost…and due to their inability to deal with failure and rejection, they aren’t leaving anytime soon.
Instead of teaching our youth how to deal with failure and inevitable rejection and how to use these experiences as fodder for developing character and becoming strong, resilient, productive adults, we have created a flat world that is unrealistic. Understandably, our previously bubble-wrapped youth and their parents are left wondering why they are so devastated by the smallest rejections and are not bouncing back from failure.
Today’s millennials are being raised to feel entitled to the win and we reproach them for their entitlement, instead of seeing we built them to fail at failing. Some of the most successful people will tell you that they’ve failed numerous times and were rejected on countless occasions, and those failures and rejections taught them invaluable lessons and only served to heighten their resolve in attaining their goals. The reality check of rejection for the previously un-rejected is often too much for them to process because they have been sold a false premise for years that they are too good to fail.
As college application results roll in, some students will be accepted and some will be rejected, as we recently heard about in the news with the student who rejected her rejection letter from Duke. Many of us have lived through this experience. However, the stakes rise when rejection has become a bad word in our culture and, as a result, parents and society as a whole are making it their raison d’ être, to do everything they can to protect kids and teens from it.
Bumper lanes at the bowling alley are an example of this excessive fortification –kids feel good in the moment, but years later, they still don’t know how to bowl. Well, the same thing is happening with rejection…our kids don’t know how to fail and it’s making them much more vulnerable to and unprepared for the inevitable rejections that come along with being in the real world.
Add to this equation the lack of privacy and all the cyber bullying that has arisen in the last decade, and there’s literally nowhere for kids to hide to nurse their wounds. It’s akin to the way celebrities feel when they get divorced and it’s all over the newspapers and magazines. Our kids have all been made into a version of celebrities, and they are lacking the coping skills required to deal with rejection and failure on its own, not to mention in the public eye of their classmates, friends and communities.
Gail Gross Ph.D., Ed.D., a child psychologist and an expert on education, has spent years studying the entitlement issues that underlie our children’s ability to cope with failure and rejection and below, she offers some insights and advice to the entitled generation:
“What often looks like rejection is an immature response to a sense of entitlement. In today’s world of heightened information where local news is national news, parents often inhibit their adolescent children from testing themselves against their environment, which can lead to immaturity.
Dr. Gross’s Advice for Parents:
- Parents must ‘step into their adult’ and parent.
- Be what you want to see…model what it is to be an adult…under all circumstances, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
- Partner with your children and teach them to know the rules… appropriate behavior for life situations.
- Use my empathic process, a way to communicate with your children without defense.
Advice for Millenials:
- Rejection is always a bruising, but if the bruise lingers you may need to speak to a professional to help identify why. Many times a rejection allows you to step back and reflect on what you really want and where you really want to be and then you can figure out how to get there.
- Don’t defend against the rejection, but instead, allow yourself to experience it, in a sense, embrace the shadow and it will move you into a larger space.
- Hold the tension of the rejection and allow yourself to sit with the feeling while doing inner work (i.e. journaling, meditating, walking, being alone, etc.). This will help you connect to the part of yourself that knows what’s best for you and how to get there.”
