How to Teach Your Children to Tolerate Frustration: 6 Steps

Parents want the best for our children., and in that attempt to give them everything, we can make the mistake of not letting them develop as people or allowing them to experience life for themselves. These behaviors, which may seem like great displays of love and protection, in the long run cause children not to they acquire some skills to cope with life and that can be useful in their future, when they only depend on them themselves.

One of these skills is frustration tolerance., which is closely related to resilience and the ability of people to cope with less pleasant situations. People with a low tolerance for frustration have serious difficulties controlling their emotions, they are very vulnerable to emotional painThey are impulsive and impatient and have difficulty adapting to changing environments.

Related article: “What is frustration and how does it affect our lives?"

Learning to tolerate frustration is key to the well-being of children

Frustration tolerance is a concept developed by Albert Ellis, a well-known psychologist that we talked about in our article “Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT)”.

And it is that enduring or tolerating frustration is necessary to face the adversities that life can present or the bad moments that sometimes we have to live. Otherwise, we can become vulnerable people in these situations or emotionally dependent people in interpersonal relationships. Life sometimes presents us with problems, and we must be able to face them and fix them instead of running away from them.

When things don't go the way we want or the expectations we had in mind are not met, it can appear frustration that if not tolerated gives way to sadness, disappointment, anguish, anxiety and disappointment.

Therefore, To tolerate frustration is to be able to face the problems that arise despite the discomfort and pain it causes, which makes it possible to better adapt to situations and, therefore, react appropriately. When it comes to educating the new generations, this is extremely important.

• Related Article: "Emotionally mature people: 6 traits that define them"

Keys to teach your children to tolerate frustration

Luckily, it is possible to work on frustration tolerance. In the following lines we give you some keys to educate your children to be more tolerant of frustration.

1. Educate with values ​​such as effort

When we educate our son, we must think about the values ​​that he is acquiring. We may think that giving him the best clothes or toys that he wants without any effort is a good father's action. However, we must educate him so that he understands that the things he receives are the result of his effort. In this way, you will learn that in life, if you want something, you have to fight for it. Gifts are not always going to come to him.

• Related article: "Educating to form independent and autonomous children"

2. Teach him to set and meet realistic goals

Frustration appears many times because we set goals that are irrational and unattainable. When we have very high expectations and we don't meet them, then we can suffer for it. Setting realistic goals and meeting them teaches us to be mature and rational, and makes it clear that we must avoid situations that lead us to feel frustrated and, therefore, to suffer.

3. Be consistent and set an example

When it comes to educating a child, we must always be consistent with what we tell them, because we are models for them. If we intend to educate them in values ​​and then we ourselves are unable to apply what we are teaching them, learning will not occur. Therefore, our way of acting affects how our children develop, since vicarious learning is especially important at this age.

Related article: “Vicarious learning: observing others to educate ourselves”

4. Don't give in to tantrums

Giving in to tantrums is a way of reinforcing negative behaviors, and causes a child to learn that she can get what he wants simply by crying or throwing tantrums. When we give in to his tantrums, we're sending him the message that he can get whatever he wants by doing this, and we won't give him time to reflect on the frustration of not getting his way. Sometimes suffering a little is good to learn valuable lessons.

5. Set limits for your child

Children and adolescents must have clear limits to know how to act. This does not mean that we should be authoritarian with them, just make them understand that there are certain behaviors that have negative consequences for them.

If we give a child a wide sleeve to do what he wants, he will always get away with it and, therefore, he will not value anything. When you find yourself in situations where things don't go the way you want, you will feel a great sense of failure for not having learned from the unpleasant experiences of the past.

6. Help you learn from frustration

Following the previous point, difficult experiences are a great opportunity to learn new things, because although many times we are not aware, you also learn from pain. In fact, experiential learning is one of the best ways to learn. Now, as long as we learn from experience through self-reflection.

• Related article: “Personal Development: 5 reasons for self-reflection”