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Motivation
Rejection Is Not the End of the World
What to do when your child doesn’t get into the school of their dreams.
Posted February 15, 2023 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Key points
- Your kids take cues from you about what’s important to worry about, so be mindful of how you express disappointment about rejection.
- Sometimes rejection may create a more certain path to an end goal than being accepted.
- To the extent that we can challenge our appraisal of what happens to us, we can also change our emotional response.
Rejection always stings. Many of us internalize rejection as meaning we are not good enough, and self-doubt never feels good. We can also believe that rejection’s effects will be devastating if we think we will be losing out on a life-transforming chance — a friendship, relationship, or some other long-awaited opportunity. Most adults can recall times when they experienced rejections that seemed catastrophic, and so it's natural for parents to want to protect their children from feeling unwanted or inadequate, or from not getting something they have set their heart on.
Over the next few weeks, many parents will receive news about where their children will be next year — which preschool, kindergarten, high school, or college. Given how high many kids aim, many will inevitably be disappointed. If the school to which your child is applying only has an acceptance rate of 5%, then regardless of how qualified they are, there’s a high possibility that they will be among those rejected. What should you do if this happens?
For clinical psychologists, this situation lends itself perfectly to a cognitive model of understanding emotions: How we appraise what happens to us largely determines how we feel about it. To the extent that we can challenge our appraisal, we can also change our emotional response.
Strategies for dealing with rejection involve reframing what is imagined to be a devastating outcome – whether by refusing to believe that rejection will keep us from reaching a highly desirable goal or by refusing to accept rejection as a commentary on our self-worth or as a deterrent to our persistence toward a goal. Sometimes the goal we imagine to be out of reach because of a rejection may, upon further reflection, seem only harder to achieve than imagined – but not at all impossible.
Here are three stories that may shed light on how to soften the blow of not getting what you or your children are actively pursuing.
Story 1: Reframing the Goal
The Monkees were a band that had been made famous after being put together for the 1960s TV sitcom of the same name. A few years ago, when band member Peter Tork passed away, an article memorializing him described how he had gotten the part in the TV series over Stephen Stills, of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Who knows how Stills took the rejection back then, but it’s likely he is thankful today that he didn’t get the part because CSNY went on to achieve greater fame, monetary reward, and critical acclaim than the Monkees ever did. Who knows what goal Stills had in mind when he auditioned for the show, but it’s likely that his goal as a musician was about more than starring in a comedy. In his case, rejection may actually have created a more certain path to his end goal.
Story 2: Your End Goals Are Bigger Than the School You Attend
Many football fans and sports commentators have been watching to see how quarterback Joe Burrow would fare in the playoffs this season. Burrow had probably dreamed since childhood of playing in the NFL, but his journey was not an easy one. He applied to several colleges, including the University of Nebraska, which his brothers and father had attended. He was not accepted. He did get into Ohio State, but he sat on the bench for three years. Ohio State has a great football program and coaches. They knew football, and yet they didn’t think Joe Burrow was starting material.
But Burrow thought differently. He re-applied to Nebraska as a transfer and got rejected again, but also applied to Louisiana State University, which accepted him. The rest is history. He was the Heisman Trophy winner during his senior year, then the number-one overall pick in the NFL draft, and, in just his second year in the league, his Cincinnati Bengals went to the Super Bowl. This year, he came up one game short of the Super Bowl, but he seems likely to reach it again. Burrow’s story reminds us that there are multiple paths to our end goals and that it takes resilience and persistence, and not just the name of a school, to reach them.
These first two stories highlight how essential it is to analyze the accuracy of your assumptions. Consider why – or even if – acceptance to a certain school is important to reaching longer-term goals. Once you have determined these goals, you can re-think the possible paths toward achieving them. Even if these are outcomes that you believe will result from attending a particular school, it is important to remember that there are always multiple paths to your goals. By mentally limiting the number you see available, any single obstruction will feel like a bigger deal.
Story 3: Failure Is Learning
Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx women’s shape-wear, became a self-made billionaire at age 41. She did not go to business school, had no formal training in fashion design, and had no family connections or wealth to back her ideas. What she did have was a father who asked her and her brother each evening at the dinner table whether they had failed at anything that day. He believed that if they hadn’t failed, they had not tried anything. This gave Blakely a completely different mindset about early rejections when she started trying to market her idea. Instead of feeling defeated, she learned from each rejection what she needed to do next.
Blakely and Burrow likely have exceptional internal narratives, and theirs are the kinds of scripts you want to give your kids. My guess is that neither looks at setbacks as obstacles to their goals; each one is just another situation to be worked through and learned from.
The takeaway from these stories is that life is not over if you don’t get exactly what you want when you want it. No single rejection in your children’s lives is going to prevent them from achieving their long-term goals. Also, your children are not born knowing that a particular school is important to their future. They learn that from you, so it’s important to both accept and communicate to them that their future will not be ruined if they don’t get into a particular school. If you aren’t convinced of this yourself, your children will pick up on your anxiety.
Be sure to acknowledge the pain that comes from disappointment, and recognize that it may take some time for you or your children to loosen your attachment to the idea of attending a particular school. But always think hard about the messages you communicate to your children. Try to focus them on goals beyond the school they attend rather than catastrophizing their rejection. Remember: The sting of rejection comes from how we interpret it.
