Excitement is something we all need.
Excitement keeps our adrenaline going. Excitement brings joy into our lives. Excitement is that incredible feeling of nervousness, expectancy, focus and anticipation that something good is about to happen.
What do you get excited about? How can we each teach our children it’s a joy to have something nice to look forward to.
And it’s important we follow through.
If a child looks forward to something s/he’s been promised, it needs to come to pass. If it doesn’t, repeatedly, it will lead not only to disappointment, but ultimately, to cynicism or despair.
Children need to learn about disappointment — that they can’t have everything they want. But if they’ve been offered something, something they look forward to, and it doesn’t come to pass, it will be felt deeply.
Remember Covid? School closure and activities cancelled. My child missed out on playing a concert in a huge professional hall with an incredible orchestra. He missed out on an air plane flying lesson. He missed out on a sky trip. It was hard knocks.
Everything he missed out on, he never went back to.
Excitement is something we all need. Disappointment is something we all need to learn how to face. Parenting through disappointment is an art I’m still working on.
I don’t force discussion, and I don’t force activity. But I do encourage. And if that’s the only thing I can do, well, I’ll do it with gusto.
My child may not have gone back to the activities he missed. But he still gets excited about other activities when he’s looking forward to them.
And I always hold my breath (and pray) in silence, that those activities will not be cancelled.