Life's Disappointments-Learning them the hard way!

Okay! So this isn't going to be a funny blog either! I am beginning to think that maybe I shouldn't have named my blog what I did. Tonight I am struggling as a parent. My kids are not perfect, and I will be the first person to admit that. I also know that in real life they will suffer disappointments. It is part of life, and a lesson they need to learn. Life is full of disappointments, and I am all for teaching my kids about life lessons to prepare them for adult hood. Jason and I try not to sugarcoat anything for this reason alone. But tonight we find ourselves trying to parent through Jacee's first major disappointment, and we are a little bit lost on how to help her through it. So let me explain why. Shawn and Jacee both tried out for the spring middle school play. One child made it and the other one didn't. Jacee has been looking forward to this particular play for weeks because it is a play on Zombies, and she LOVES Zombies. She has talked about it non-stop for the past month. She is the one that didn't make it. She is heart broken. And quite honestly her Dad and I are floored. She has been in a drama club since she was in 2nd grade. This past fall for the school fall play, she had a pretty big part (a bigger part in matter of fact than some of the kids that DID make the spring play). I figured she would make it. So when I got the call this after noon that said "Mom, I didn't make the play. Can you come pick me up?", I was shocked! I get there and she is crying, and of course started to cry even harder when she saw me. When we got home she locked herself in the bathroom and cried for almost an hour. I spent my time trying to convince her that it will be okay. She can just work harder and try again. Of course through the sobs she is telling me she won't try again, and that she feels the teachers had it all picked out before try outs, and of course "one girl even has a talent agent, and acting coach! How will I EVER beat that Mom? The worst part is I don't know what I did so wrong to not make it in it. They won't tell me." I worked through that thinking "okay this is just teenage girl hormones raging, she is probably exaggerating because she is so upset. I know she will get past it." I am trying to be my positive cheer leading self to get her through it. But inside, inside I am raging! The more I heard through the sobs the more upset I am! So what do I do? Call my husband, who becomes equally upset and says "I am leaving work to go talk to the teachers. This is ridiculous!" So Papa Bear shows up to pick Shawn up and talks to the teachers. The teachers who run the drama club, bless their hearts, do it voluntarily. They don't get paid extra to do this for the kids. They are great teachers, and they put on wonderful productions. But what my husband heard only verified what Jacee had been telling me. The more he talked with them the more upset my husband became, and he ultimately had to walk away from the conversation. Neither of us expected the outcome to be different, I think we just wanted answers. They have their reasons for picking whom they did, and we can't change that. He was told that "Jacee is very talented. She is a very good actress." So why she didn't make the play when others did, we will never know because they couldn't give us an answer. Do I feel that there is a bit of favoritism going on for whom made it and whom did not? Absolutely! Supposedly one kid was told before try outs "that they had the perfect part for him". Shawn was actually told on Monday that he would make the play but just have a smaller part because of his screw up on the last play. So yes, there is a part of me that is convinced that there is a little bit of politics and favoritism happening and my daughter just got caught up in the wrong end of it. But that too is a life lesson that she will have to learn. My kids will not always succeed at everything, whether it will be because they don't have the skills, or there is someone a better fit for the role/job, or whether or not they aren't a favorite in someones opinion. They just need to learn from it, move forward, and find the positives to let them define who they are. Reality is, Jacee probably won't try out for another play. She is my shy child, who tries so hard (harder than anyone I know!)to push herself past her comfort zones. But she is also very stubborn when it comes to stuff like this. She will try something until she fails. If she fails she will either find a way to beat it and succeed, or she will decide it isn't for her and move on. She very rarely allows herself to fail at something more than once. In this case, because she doesn't understand why she didn't make it, and she understands that it is purely subjective, in her mind she will have nothing to fix, and more than likely decide to move on. Its just hard to parent through the heartbreak when you have no solid answers yourself. Tough lessons such as this are the hardest to parent through! But are lessons in life that the kids will face all the way through! But kills me, because I want to take all their heartbreaks away!