Rejected?!?

How to help your child (and yourself) deal with disappointment

Your child got the thin envelope—rejected from his dream school—and your hopes are also dashed. How will you react? Rejection is similar to a grieving process; there are stages to pass, and your strength and health at the end depends on how you are able to progress through these stages of “mourning.”

SADNESS/DISAPPOINTMENT: Your heart sinks, knowing that your child will not be on that dream campus in the fall. Your heart breaks for your child’s disappointment.

ANGER: You think, “How could they not have taken my amazing child? What were they thinking?”

LETTING GO: You can finally say, “This was not the place for my child. There are other places where she was admitted, and where she will be happy; I want to help her find her place.” Through the difficult first stages, you are most vulnerable to upsetting your children further by the way you react.

Here are a few critical mistakes you can make in handling yourself that can prevent your child from moving forward.

MISTAKE #1: Calling admissions officers and yelling at them in your child’s presence. An aggressive, angry conversation will achieve nothing (aside from annoying the admissions officer), and it only models poor sportsmanship. This is neither the first nor the last disappointment you will have in your lives. If your child really needs closure and has to ask why, he can make a calm, rational, investigatory phone call—by himself—to the admissions office.

MISTAKE #2: Encouraging your child to open a new campaign for admission. Sending letters and e-mails, having everyone you know contact every office on campus, and returning to the admissions office to fight in person will only waste your child’s time and emotional energy and prevent you from moving on to better choices. Admissions decisions are rarely, if ever, reversed. Focus your energies on real possibilities.