Ep. 134 5 Coping Skills to Help Midlife Parents Turn Their Child’s College & Job Rejection into Growth

Have you ever felt the gut punch of watching your child face rejection—whether from a dream school, a job, or an opportunity they worked so hard for?

For midlife parents, March brings more than blooming flowers—it’s also a season of tough decisions and, for many, painful rejections. 

In this episode, you’ll discover

1. Three essential coping strategies to help your child process rejection in a healthy way.

2. What NOT to do when your child faces disappointment—and how to avoid common parental missteps that make your child feel WORSE when facing rejection

3.  A powerful real-life story of resilience that proves rejection can be a stepping stone to growth, not a roadblock.

Press play now to learn how to turn rejection into an opportunity for growth—and give your child the lifelong gift of resilience, confidence, and self-trust.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover three powerful strategies to help your child navigate rejection, grow resilience, and regain confidence after big disappointments. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. It's March, a season for fresh starts, blooming flowers, and for many midlife parents, the heartbreak of rejection. Have you ever watched your child open an email, their face full of hope, only to see their expression fall as they read the words, we regret to inform you. If you have, you know that that rejection isn't just theirs. It's yours too. For high school and college seniors, March Madness isn't just about basketball. It's about college and job decisions. And you, dear parent, have been assigned an unpaid, high stakes role, helping your child navigate these disappointments. You can do it. By the end of this episode, I'm going to give you a three part game plan to support your child through this rejection in a way that builds resilience, confidence, emotional strength, and a closer connection with you, their biggest cheerleader. As always, I'll end with an inner challenge, something you can start today to help ease your anxiety. Before we dive into what to do, let's start with what not to do. Let's be honest. This is hard. And when things are hard, you might react unintentionally in ways that don't really help. Think about it. Have you ever done or been tempted to do any of these things? Minimize your child's pain by saying, Oh, you'll be fine. It's no big deal. Overreacting. This is a disaster. We need to appeal that decision. Comparing them to others. Your cousin got into that school. How could you not have gotten in? Jumping straight to problem solving. Okay, we are going to figure out plan B. Let's look at transfer options. Personally, plan B, that's my favorite. These reactions come from love, but they don't give your kids what they really need. Let's shift gears and let's talk about what will help your child navigate through this rejection. Coping skill number one, prepare yourself first. Before these decision emails roll in, take time to mentally prepare. I want you to take a minute And imagine the worst case scenario. Your child doesn't get into their dream school or land that job. Just take 20 seconds right now and let yourself imagine that. I'm actually recording this in the same room that my child sat in when he opened the email from his dream college. And it said, thanks. But no thanks. if you're like me, your heart sinks, maybe your stomach clenches, and you're holding your breath. Yes, this rejection that your child experiences, you will also experience. Think of how much time, effort, and love you've put into this child, hoping that anything that they went after would be theirs. Of course, you're disappointed. So prepare yourself first by noticing, naming, and taming your feelings. Are you anxious, defensive, pissed, heartbroken? Recognizing your emotions will remind you to ground your feet, take some breaths, and stay calm. Help your mind get clear after your emotions flood it. After you do that, then you move to aim, notice, name, tame, and aim. And in this situation, the question that you want to answer in aim is how do I want to show up for my child in this moment? Now, I hope you don't have this moment, but if you have this moment, it is going to be so helpful for you to just take a few seconds right now and ask yourself, how do I want to be there for them? What does your best self look like? What words will help your child feel safe? What words should you avoid? By preparing yourself, you're going to set the tone for how your child will handle their own disappointment. And that leads to coping skill number two. How do you sit with your child's grief without trying to fix it? let me share with you one of the hardest parenting moments. I have ever had. Years ago, my daughter was applying to musical theater programs, a brutally competitive process. She had worked with an acting coach who was also a department chair at a theater school. He encouraged her to do an early audition at a smaller program, calling it a shoe we drove to a little school in the middle of a cornfield. We walked in, and I immediately noticed that she looked quite different than all the other kids. She had on a dress., Professional headshots, a binder full of music. The others were far more casual. She sang, danced, nailed her monologue, and felt fantastic about the whole experience. We waited because they were posting the acceptance list later that day. The list came out and she wasn't on it. Soon, a second list came out for vocal performance and there she was, accepted for something she hadn't even applied for and had no desire to study. Because she's an actress, she held it together until we got in the car, and then she cried for five, yes, five straight hours. I sat next to her, completely unprepared. I know nothing about musical theater. And this was supposed to be her sure thing in an unpredictable process. So we drove and she cried. We drove and she cried. We drove and she cried. I just held her hand and stared out the window. I truly had no clue what to say. Had we been home, I am absolutely sure I would have gone into fix it mode, done the dishes, made dinner, anything to distract myself from feeling helpless. But in that car, I was trapped with her grief, and looking back, that was exactly what she needed. By the time we got home, she had cried it all out. She turned to me and she said, Well, I guess I need to redo my audition package. It obviously sucks. Then I realized, Oh my God, I got lucky. Being stuck in that car. Forced me to be with her emotions. dismissive. Like what? There'll be other schools. I think you were just too good for them. You don't want to go to a school in a cornfield anyways. I just kept repeating, I'm so sorry. You worked so hard. And that was enough. As the days went on, I learned two things. Because her dad and I couldn't escape the intensity of rejection that she felt, I think we said to her, you can do this and you're not alone. Because we stayed with her. She was able to do the big bell curve of emotion where you move through it and then you come to some mental clarity. And it was in that moment when she said, I need to retool my audition package. Which she did, into her first choice. I learned something about this 18 year old that I didn't fully understand. She wanted this so badly that the rejection didn't break her. It actually made her more focused. It made her try harder. And in a profession where you audition constantly and rejection happens far more than success, this was an essential skill for her future, and without realizing it, she had just passed this test, Which leads me to the third coping skill of navigating your child's reaction to their rejection. Let's face it. If you're in midlife, you're two or three times older than your child. You will have a much quicker mind, many more options for what they can do with the rejection. I want to talk about what happens after the initial heartache and encourage you to restrain yourself from all these possibilities that could fix it and allow your child to find their own way. This is so challenging to do as a parent. I once had a client who was the first in his family in generations to not get into an Ivy League school. He was so devastated. He called for an emergency appointment. He sat down and he said I'm not going to college. Obviously, it's not for me. His parents had actually done a really good job letting him grieve, but now they were panicked. He was saying, if I can't go to an Ivy, it's not worth it. At that moment, I didn't push back. Instead, I looked at him and I said, well, of course, not going to college is a legitimate option. I reminded him that 60 percent of the people in the United States don't have a college degree. There are many, many paths in adulthood to have a good, honorable, and fun life. That was all it took. He launched into a storm of possibilities. Well, maybe I'll go to trade school. I've always loved making things with my hands. Or I heard about a kid who worked on this ranch for a year. That sounds amazing. Or maybe I'll start my own business. I have an idea that I haven't told anybody. I can't tell you because I think these are all really good options. And then, as often happens in teenager land, Something I couldn't have anticipated happened. He went to school and he began to talk to his friends that he might not go to college. And they all began to brainstorm with him. Fantastic ideas. You could be an au pair in Europe. You could go to Alaska and be a salmon fisher. I have an uncle who lives in Rome. He'd probably love to have you come and be his apprentice. He came back to his next session energized, but also with a much broader view of possibilities. Unfortunately, he was freaking his parents out and I received an email from his dad saying, Who the heck are you to be encouraging my kid to not go to college? I had his parents come into my office the next day and I explained. He isn't quitting going to college. He is taking back his power. Think about it. Since this kid's been in sixth or seventh grade, he had his eye on the prize. He worked so hard to get into an Ivy League school and it didn't work out. There were many options that he never considered because there was one path in his mind and that path didn't work out for him. And now what he's doing isn't rejecting college. He's actually stepping into his own power and trying other things out that he never considered because he only saw one path for his future. The mom looked at me and said, Oh, so he's not quitting, but he's taking back his power. But can you assure us he'll go to college? Of course, I can't assure you he'll go to college. Just like, I couldn't assure you that he'd get into an Ivy, but what I can assure you is this is a fine human being with many talents, and one of the things that we do when we feel rejected is we kind of like to reject, and he is rejecting it. But not in a destructive way. In a healthy, curious, and you can see his positive energy is coming back. And isn't it fascinating that his friends are joining him in this. They are helping him to revision his future. They know how disappointed he is, but they know what a great kid he is. This is difficult. He's got to navigate the rejection. You can't do that for him. Your only job is to say to him, we believe in you. We trust you. But for our peace of mind, so we can sleep at night, can you accept my request? one of the schools that you were admitted to, just so you still have that option as you move through this process. Think about it. The Ivies might have rejected him, but his parents are not rejecting him. And in the end, that is what gives a kid stability. That is what gives a kid self confidence that my parents trust me. to find my way. Then he started dating a girl from work and one night he went over to her house and her dad was an electrician. He began to ask his dad about what it was like to be an electrician. He listened to the dad's story, and then the dad said, What are you going to do next year? And he shared his story with the dad. The dad listened intently, and then the dad said to him, Wait a second. You got into three colleges, and because none of them are Ivy's, you're not going to go to college? Kid, you'd hate being an electrician. You'd be so frustrated because this job is all about adapting when things don't go as planned. Maybe you should go work on that ranch. The clean air, physical exercise, that actually sounds great. In that moment, he pulled out his phone and he typed this line, which he brought to his next session. I can adapt or I can escape. If we stay with our kids and let them navigate rejection, what we often see is a very powerful process that unfolds that is unique to them. This young man learned about adapting. When we talk about mental wellness, rigidity is I can only be at an Ivy League school. Chaos is I'm not going if they don't accept me. But mental wellness is flexible and adaptive and coherent. He adapted and he went to one of the state schools that fall. If you want to learn more about my model for mental wellness, check out episodes 130 and 131 Your child's journey will not be a straight line. Part of you will want the safe and predictable path, but the other part will grow into the reality that resilience comes from uncertainty. The job of a teenager is to answer the question, who am I? Successes help them define who they are, but so do failures. What you want to give your child when the no's come is this deep sense that I trust that you can move through this no in not only a healthy way, but in a way that at the end of it you will come to know yourself in a more authentic loving and productive way. Your inner challenge this week is to pay attention. How do you respond when someone you love faces disappointment? Do you rush in to fix it? Do you distract? Or are you really good at just being with them? Remember, rejection is really painful, but it's also a stepping stone to resilience, self awareness, and finding doors that you didn't know could ever open for you. Your child will find their way, and your trust in them will be one of the most powerful gifts you can give them. I'll be back on Thursday to talk about the most challenging part of college, and that is paying for it. How to navigate these conversations with your children that help them step in to the next level of emerging adulthood. Thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.