Can you remember the last time you got frustrated? Think back to what the situation was – what was your level of tolerance?
I love putting together Ikea or other flat-pack furniture items. I have a system of laying out all the pieces and matching them to what I am supposed to have, and then slowly following the guide. Along the way, I get frustrated when I can’t get the pieces to join properly or sometimes my frustration level rises as I have misread the instructions, but my determination to succeed outweighs my frustration – sometimes I take a break and then come back to it. I find the outcome satisfying. On the other hand, when something goes wrong with my car, my tolerance level is low and I tend to catastrophise.
Frustration is an internal tension when we have an experience where our goals or expectations don’t go as planned and we struggle to manage the unpleasant feelings without catastrophising it. Often, frustration gets misunderstood as low-level anger, but it can be helpful to understand that frustration tolerance is our capacity to manage those feelings, and this can vary from person to person and possibly from situation to situation. With a low level of tolerance, people are quick to feel frustrated and feel it intensely; they cannot handle the feelings of discomfort and prioritise short-term avoidance over longer-term goals. In contrast, people who have high tolerance sit with the frustrations and feelings of discomfort, seeing it as a manageable part of life.
Understanding frustration tolerance is important in supporting children to be able to help them manage their feelings. For children (and adults!), low frustration tolerance can inhibit curiosity and attempts to learn new skills or participate in different events.
There are a range of different ways to support and improve frustration tolerance in children, such as using mindfulness techniques. If you can learn to recognise the early signs, you can guide the child to make a choice to respond differently by helping them to calm down, breathe and diffuse the potential frustration. Another way is to reframe the challenge, using different words to describe it, changing their perspective to see the challenge as bearable by modelling persistence and patience, and breaking tasks down into smaller steps – just like the Ikea build.
There are great benefits to developing a higher frustration tolerance, the most apparent of which is better mental health and the opportunity to engage in new experiences, which we all want for our children. It is an important component of emotional resilience, allowing us to endure setbacks, maintain goal commitment and handle delayed gratification.
Wendy Seidler
ELC Director – Kew campus
