What to Do When Your Child’s Teacher, Coach, or School Is Unfair

Note: This post is about everyday unfairnesses every child experiences, and not the harm caused by racism, sexism, or similar biases that should be handled differently.

On the way home from his first day of 7th grade, my son announced they had ketchup for the hamburgers in the school cafeteria. When I asked him why this was a big deal, he told me, “Last year some boys had a distance shooting contest with the ketchup dispensers and the principal banned ketchup for the year. Now it’s back!” The psychologist inside my head reacted by thinking, “What an idiotic punishment, banning ketchup for an entire year! This is what used to happen in the 1950s. What happened to effective modern-day discipline?”

Then, it hit me: This is the son who used to have tantrums when his hamburgers were served up with anything other than ketchup and who refused to eat any hamburger without ketchup. When I inquired about whether he had eaten any hamburgers following the ketchup ban, he informed me, “Of course I did! I wasn’t going to go without lunch, Mom.”

This was miraculous; my very picky son had gone an entire school year learning how to cope with a ridiculous punishment and learned to eat something he previously disliked because it was the practical thing to do. He learned this without any help from me. I quickly reversed my opinion of the principal and felt grateful for the unfairness of it all because my son had 9 months of improving his character by adapting to unfairness.

It is frustrating and painful to discover your child is being treated unfairly by the adults who are supposed to look out for their well-being. They get put on the sidelines when other less talented or skilled kids get selected. The entire class gets punished for the bad behavior of several repeat offenders who are not your kid. The teacher keeps calling on other kids or selecting others for special roles. When this happens, you likely worry about the ill effects this blatant unfairness has on your child’s self-esteem, resilience, and willingness to participate. Your grizzly bear instincts are likely to get triggered, and then you rush to correct the unfairness, dashing off emails, talking to other parents, or going to the higher-ups. I frequently work with families in which these types of unfair situations occur, and the mistake I see parents and grandparents making is rushing in to confront the authorities to make things fair. I also see how they talk to their child about the situation, which makes things worse because they emphasize how unfairness is not to be tolerated. Let me explain.

• An unfortunate fact of life is that quite often, things really are unfair. To help children become effective adults, we have to teach them how to create fairness in the way they deal with others while accepting that it is not always practical to fight every instance of unfairness, especially when doing so will create more potential harm than good. Have you ever thought about what it takes to teach a child to live in an unfair world? Repeatedly striving on your child’s behalf to make things fair is not going to work, because no parent can ever perfectly control the environment. Additionally, privilege creates automatic unfairness across situations that your child will need to learn how to work around. A much better choice is to begin very early to state the obvious: “Sometimes things aren’t fair, and that is disappointing, but that does not mean you give up or have a tantrum. It means you try again and realize sometimes things will unfairly be in your favor. It happens to everyone and is not a reflection on you. It is a normal part of life.”
• Picture what happens to adults when they believe everything should be fair. They get enraged when someone drives badly or gets a bigger raise. They feel sick with envy. They give up easily, and they focus on all the crummy things, which sucks the life out of their ability to find the areas where they can make things work better and more fairly. Practice has to begin early, in toddlerhood, when other kids are indeed selfish and unfair with their toys and attention. Which kind of adult do you want your child to be? Allow strategic unfairness to occur with turn-taking, which cookie you select, or who gets picked without complaining.
• The only way to acquire tolerance for the human inconsistencies of others is to practice behaving with tolerance. The goal is to help your child learn that other people’s unfairness does not reflect their worth. It just reflects the other person’s humanity and is inconvenient but not a crisis.
• Recognize that an important part of developing emotional intelligence is learning how to manage distress. As parents, we need to allow our children to experience the typical life of a human being, the one in which bosses, teachers, coaches, and school systems are not always fair or well-suited. The child who learns to quickly acknowledge unfairness without personalizing it has an advantage in life. Your child needs a certain amount of unfairness to practice on to grow into a mentally well adult.
• Have you ever thought about what makes it easy for a teacher to appreciate and enjoy working with your child? If you have seen social media posts from teachers and professors entitled, “Emails I have received from parents,” you will grasp the hazards of pushing a teacher to focus on your child’s self-esteem because their focus is on every child’s academic well-being. They care about your child but do not see themselves as a therapist, parent, or perfect arbiter of fairness. The risk is high that they receive your suggestions for how to teach your child as unnecessary criticism of their teaching. A much better strategy is to ask them for guidance on how you can help your child handle disappointment. Think of being the parent your child’s teacher enjoys working with because you show them you respect their decisions in the classroom and can allow for their human mistakes.
• Have you thought about how your child learns to be a team player? Part of being a good team player means doing your part wholeheartedly even when it feels unfair. When the ball keeps going to other players, you still have to defend your zone and get in position in the event the ball comes your way. The other kid does a great job as lead in the play while your kid works on set construction; then you want your child to admire the star while taking pride in the set they helped construct, instead of feeling envious of the standing ovation the lead received. Being a good teammate means learning to celebrate when things go well for others without the same for yourself. This is where learning to accept unfairness becomes an advantage.
• Examine your own history of managing unfair situations. Do you still hold a grudge, feel hurt, or feel let down that someone in authority was not able to rectify the situation? If so, you may want to talk about this with a friend, trusted mentor, or therapist so you can clear your mind to be more thoughtful about what your child is experiencing and how you can show them the moment is one for character building rather than automatic rescue. When you respond with alarm, you show your child that unfairness is a disaster, rather than an annoying part of being a human who has to live with other humans. Your child needs your calm wisdom, commiseration, and ability to show them how to cope, instead of your coping for them.