If you start telling your son what to do, worry about his future, worry about his personality being affected by rejection; if you are losing sleep over this then this episode is for you.
I share 2 things that will give you immediate relief and provide you with a way to think about this that will make life better.
If you need help with getting over your sons rejection you can sign up for a free session here: https://coachingnatalia.com/schedule-an-appointment/
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELLOW:
Welcome to my stop fighting with your son podcast. If this is your first time here, I recorded four episodes, especially for you to help you eliminate the fights right away and start connecting with your boy. As, as possible, go to episodes 54 through 59. I have four boys on my own, and I know better than anyone, how much you want to have a good relationship with your boy and all the things that can come in your way. If you are a mom of boys, I am the coach for you. Let’s go, Hey guys, I how’s it going? How are you doing what’s with you? What are your plans? What are you? What’s your week look like? I hope it’s going really well. Uh, mine’s going well. Although of course, life with kids is never boring. One kid is sick. The other kid is sick. It’s like everything changes minute by minute.
So last night, one of them poor guy was puking. The other was sent home yesterday from school because he had a terrible cough today. One of them back went back. The other one has a little fever on the couch now watching movies. <laugh> I feel like every time I record a podcast, now I have a kid sick, watching a show upstairs <laugh> but that’s how it is, right? That’s because I think they, um, they’re not wearing masks at school anymore, so they’re kind of picking up all the germs now. So hopefully that passes soon. So he’s gonna feel better. Everything’s good. And I have a little story for you today because my mom, whenever she listens to my story, she always says she likes my story. So I’m gonna tell you stories. Hi mama. And so, so here’s a story about, um, one of my twinsies just had a birthday and of course this story will bring me to the podcast.
Topic is rejection and actually coached, uh, someone on that recently. So I will wrap it up then, but first I’m gonna start with a story. So my twins had a birthday recently. They turned six and of course we threw a party for them and, uh, invited some friends. And a lot of people are sweet feet, but two days before the party, I got a message from this one little, uh, girl’s parents saying, oh, we’re so sorry was an incident today at school. And she doesn’t feel comfortable coming to the party anymore. And you know, at first I was of course, kind of a little shocked and surprised and I thought, okay, you know what? I’m not gonna get too involved. I, you know, I’ll said, I’m so sorry. I hope she feels better. Is there anything new? So then they tell me that one of my little boys punched her in the stomach and my boys are not known for violence at school.
Yes. They’re super rough with each other because there’s four boys and that’s how they express love and affection and anything. Right. Really. So because they’re boys, as you know, you have sons, so you would know, but at school they’ve been really good boys. Knock on wood. Everything’s been good. So, and of course it came as a shock to me to hear that. So I thought maybe he was just playing. Maybe he was, pretend punching her. Maybe he was affectionate or maybe he did truly try to see what happens. Right. And of course the teacher agreed with me. She said, he’s not violent. Like he’s no way she didn’t even know what happened. And so she said, everything’s good. So anyway, everything got figured out by the time the party happened. And I apologized, he apologized, everyone was really nice to each other. Everything was great.
And, but the day before, like while it was happening while we were figuring it out, I found myself to be home. And I felt really sad. I felt like, um, really hurt. Like how can someone not like my boy he’s so sweet. It just felt so hurtful to me and sad. And I felt like I was rejected or even worse. Like my son was rejected. So I cried. I was crying. I was like, oh no, my poor boy. He’s so sweet. How can someone not want to be his friend? And as, because I, I have done this work for myself and for a while now I knew that, um, what to do in that situation, I knew that all I had to do in the moment was just be sad. I didn’t have to change my son. I didn’t have to give them a big lecture.
Although, you know, I did do like the usual, like, you know, we don’t hurt people, blah, blah, blah. Uh, and the girls don’t like pre you know, like fighting for fun, but I knew that there was no actual problem to solve. And so all I, all I had to do was just feel sad. All I had to do was just cry, feel hurt. And, and then the, that would be all gone. So let me go right into my topic because I’m already kind of telling you, um, <laugh> what to do because a lot of us, like, we would feel like there’s a real problem that my son got rejected. Right? Like, it feels like, like a problem, right? Because if we feel sad because we feel hurt, we feel like he shouldn’t be rejected. Um, of course we don’t want him to be rejected. Right.
It feels bad. Of course. Okay. So my client also had a similar situation and let me just read about what she wrote to me. She said, love him so much. Uh, her son, and it breaks my heart to see him get rejected by other kids. And I’m scared. It has an impact on his personality. He used to be very outgoing. And now at the park, he asked me to ask for him if he can play with other kids, like he’s scared of being rejected. It makes me want to cry because I feel so sad to see him struggle like that. I wish things would be easy for him. This, these were the words of my client. See very similar to what I experienced. I was cry. I, I want, I, I was sad and I want him not to be rejected. So here’s what I want to tell you, moms of boys, first of all, I want to tell you on this idea that it’s not a problem that he’s rejected.
Okay. Hear me out first, uh, piece of information. I want to tell you that should give you relief. Is that, um, no one’s being rejected, um, anywhere, because when we separate, when we look at the story and we see, okay, what’s actually going on here and we look at the facts, we can separate the facts from your story about what happened. For example, a little boy goes to the playground, says, you know, do you want to play with me? And the other kid may say nothing. Just like little kids do. If they don’t want to do something, they don’t say anything. Right. Or they might say no. Right. Or they might say some sort of version of that. Or like in my son’s, um, my son’s scenario, the girl said, I don’t want to go to the party anymore. Right. Those are the facts. Okay.
So notice how the words of the facts are like the girls that I don’t want to go anymore. Or the, the kid said no. And then we take those facts as moms. And we put them to, into our brain and our brain interprets in a way that it thinks, uh, is useful or it like tries to rational. It gives it a, it interprets it, it gives it a story. It doesn’t just say, oh, she said, no, no. The brain says, oh, she rejected him. Or he rejected him. Right. It makes up a story about it, which is what our brains are supposed to do. Right? They’re supposed to judge situations as good and bad, safe, not safe. And because our brains, we have a primitive brain that all animals have and we, uh, have developed, uh, we are meant to live in groups because it feels safe.
So of course, when our primitive brain senses that we have been rejected, or our kid is rejected, it feels dangerous, feels not safe. And we want to avoid that by all means. All right, we want to avoid that for our kids, by all means. So of course, that feels terrible. Of course, we want to avoid that. Uh, because back in the day, when we had to survive by living in a group, like when we’re cave, man being rejected from the group could literally meant death because we could not be protected from wild animals. We would starve. So we would die. So rejection literally meant death back then. And so our brain still interprets rejection in this way. It feels super dangerous. It feels not safe. We must be accepted by all means. Okay. But because we have an evolved part of our brain, we can then comfort the scared part of us.
We can then tell it, tell it, okay, someone rejecting your little kid at the playground is not going to cause anyone to die. We’re not going to starve. Wild animals will not eat us. It’s totally fine. This is part of life now, and it’s not dangerous. And then we comfort it and it like, and it trusts us cuz we’re wise. <laugh> and if you think about it, rejection is a huge part of life for grownups and for kids, uh, grownups, we get rejected for jobs. We get rejected by partner. I mean, your boy will get rejected a lot probably by women or men, right? Whoever they pursue jobs, friends. So I like to think of it as good practice for the kids. Practice being rejected, practice handling rejection. But so, because again, like let’s go back to, are the facts like straight away from the facts?
The facts are, the kid said no, but our brain creates a conclusion. Oh no, the kid’s been rejected. And when we create that story, that story will create our feeling. What happens at the playground between our kid and another kid does not create our feeling. What happened between my son and his friend didn’t make me cry. Didn’t make me sad. Did not make me hurt because I, when that happened, I didn’t know it was happening. Right. So how can something outside of me make me feel so something while it’s happening, the only way I can do that is by my brain telling me something about it. So later when I found out it was happening, I, my brain interpreted in a way like, oh no, my sweet little boy, how someone doesn’t want to be his friend. That was a story that was making me feel sad.
Okay. Not what happened between my little boy and his friend. It was what my thoughts were. My thoughts in the moment they felt true. Right? I will give you that they will feel true. They will feel like you are just experiencing life, but between life and your feeling of sadness, there’s always this commentary in your brain. Always these words, all these words, these thoughts in your brain will create your sadness or not. <affirmative> okay. So this, because I knew this, uh, and I hope you will also use this and, and have relief because I knew it wasn’t actually coming from what happened. I knew was coming from myself, from my brain. All I had to do was just, I, you know, be compassionate, be understanding with myself. Like of course I feel sad because I, I feel so, you know, because I’m telling myself the story about my little boy that someone doesn’t wanna be his friend.
Oh no. Right. Of course. So I knew that all I had to do was just feel my feeling like, feel sad. Right? And then once that passed, I was like, okay. Then I knew that rejection is not a problem. It’s part of life. Okay. So this is the other part. So I’m not. So when I tell you that your story will create your feelings for you in this situation. I don’t want you to tell yourself a one wonderful story. You probably don’t want to tell yourself that, oh, everything’s amazing. Everyone loves my son. When someone just said no to him, right. When someone said, my kid doesn’t wanna come to your son’s birthday party, you don’t don’t wanna tell yourself that everyone loves my kid. You know, that just doesn’t make any sense. You don’t want that. Right. We’re not here in the business of lying to ourselves.
And I am not here to tell you to be positive about it, right? This is not about that. This is, I am inviting you to be a human here. And humans will think, oh, I am. Um, you know, I am feeling sad because I’m thinking my son was rejected. So you want to choose, you probably want to feel sad, right. About your son being rejected. But here, after hearing this episode, I want you to attribute your feeling of sadness, not to what happened to your son, but to your own thought about, about it. Okay. And that will give you all the power to control how you feel about it. Right? Because if we are dependent on what happened with our son, we can’t change that. We can’t go back in the past and change whether they were rejected or not. It, it happened. Right. So, so since we’re telling ourselves a story about it, we probably still want to tell ourselves a story that it’s rejection. Right. Because it makes sense. But then what do we think about rejection? And I want to tell you that, is it useful to think rejection is a problem?
And I don’t think so. I think that rejection is part of life and it’s supposed to be there. And yes, even for little kids, even for big kids, for all the kids, I know it’s heartbreaking. I know we want the best for them. I know we want them to everything to be easy for them, just like my client said. But when we think that way and things are not easy for them, we are then a little bit frustrated, disappointed, upset, right? We’re not happy with reality. So the other option is for us to, to plan on it. Oh, of course my son of will get rejected. And in fact, my son will get rejected a lot in his life. And this is when he arts getting rejected and it’s, it’s good practice for him to handle being rejected. Right. How do you feel when you are expecting your son to get rejected?
I feel prepared. I feel open to it. I feel like I, um, I feel like nothing has gone wrong and I hope that you also will adult up adopt this mindset that nothing has gone wrong here. This is part of life. And it’s part of life for your kid. I know that kind of, we don’t want that to be part of life for them. We’re like, we’ll handle it. We are grownups. It’s supposed to be, you know, 50 50 for us, but no, not for our kids. I’m sure we can like figure out how we can protect them from that. No, this is supposed to happen. You are supposed to have your son being rejected. And when that happens, you, this a few things happen when your son gets a no, he will have thoughts about it. It which will create his experience of it for him.
And that could be something that feels bad and can be a problem, or that can be something that makes him stronger and makes him more resilient and helps him move forward. And, uh, he can practice good thoughts about himself, right? <affirmative> and then you will have thoughts about that as well, which will make your experience about it. And as his mom, I really think that you ha you can influence his perception of his, him being rejected and what, how you react to his rejection will set the tone for how he should, should react. If you don’t react. Like it’s a problem. If you’re like, oh yeah, that’s totally fine. Then he will also think, oh, then it’s totally fine. Right. He will think his own thoughts. Right. But as kids do, they copy what they see and they try to be like us. And then they learn by our reactions sometimes what they should react like.
Right. So this is what I love to do with my kids is totally not make it a big deal. When something like that happens, I go, oh, okay, well, what do you wanna do now? What do you wanna think now about this? How do you want to feel about this? Is this a problem for you? And I, I don’t think it’s a problem for them to have hardship and struggle. And so I don’t react in that outweigh. And so I act like this is normal part of life, and I want to encourage you to do the same because that’s the truth, right? So that’s the reality of life. It will be hardship 50% of the time. And because you have a brain human brain that thinks thoughts that create negative emotion for you 50% of the time. Right? So I want you to be, um, let me just check my notes.
So I think I covered everything and I, I hope that you, as a mom, with this information on my podcast, you are the perfect mom to guide him through all of the hardships, right? Because you know that ultimately he gets to decide how he views the rejection. He can, you know, he, he can make it mean something about himself that makes him feel bad. And as a mom, you can ask him, does, how does that feel? Do you want to decide to think that, what do you want to make it mean? Right? When someone rejects you, what do you want to make it mean about you? You don’t have to make it mean anything about you. You can just make mean something about them. Oh, they just didn’t wanna play with me. It has nothing to do with me. Right? And you are the perfect mom to guide them.
And if you’re still struggling with any of this and you are not quite seeing the whole facts versus story, I really invite you to come get coached and talk about your situation specifically, and your thoughts specifically so that we can look at them and you can choose consciously what it is that you want to feel about your son. When your son’s rejected. It’s up to, to you. You can, you can live the life where your son’s rejection is not as a non-event, it’s not a big deal. Of course it doesn’t mean anything. You can even make it mean something good about him. Right? Of course you have to believe it. And I believe it. I think it makes him stronger. And I think it makes me also stronger as a mom when I can handle my son being rejected. And that’s why actually one of my favorite thoughts about that when my kids struggle is they can handle it.
It a, he was rejected and he can handle it. And I tell them that, oh, that’s fine. You can handle it. And they’re and if they don’t believe it, if they’re whining, oh, I don’t know. Right. I, I don’t buy it from them. I tell ’em Nope. I know you can do it. I know you can handle it. And I know I can handle them being rejected. I know I can handle crying <laugh> and I know I can handle being sad and that’s all that’s required. And after it passes, I move on to the next, right. And if I have another, um, wave of sadness, then I will cry again. And of course, you, as a mom, this is big part of your job as a mom is to feel that for your kids, right, uh, is to feel sad and to not want them to be rejected.
And the other sentence, I want to point out to you that my client wrote. And she, um, said, I wish things would be easy for him. And I want, I want to show you that when we think that sentence, when we believe it, and things are not easy for him, we suffer. We really, really, really suffer. We feel so disappointed and sad and frustrated. And <affirmative> because when our expectation doesn’t match reality, we will always lose. So, because life is supposed to be 50% negative emotion, 50% terrible. Why don’t we think that I want 50% of life to be easy for my kid. And I want 50% of life to be hard for my kid, because that’s what life is. So then when we get that in life, we are satisfied. We are not miserable. We’re like, yes, that’s exactly what I expected. That’s exactly what I expected for him.
And that’s exactly what we get. Not a problem. All right. My friends, if you have, if you need help, um, with any of this, I really would love to help you and you can come sign up for a free session. Um, it’s you can go to my website at WW dot coaching, natalia.com, go to the sign up for our free session tab, pick a time that works for you, and you can, um, completely change your relationship with your son, just with the first few sessions, even before we get down deep. So, um, have a great week and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
