Helping Children Handle Injustice

Part 14 in the Understanding your child's emotions series

Perceived unfairness or injustice can cause anger, arguments, withdrawal or outrage. To adults, a situation may seem relatively minor. To the child, it can feel deeply significant. The challenge is that life doesn't always feel fair. And one of the most important emotional skills children can develop is learning how to respond when things don't go their way.

Why Unfairness Feels So Powerful

As we explored in the last post, children appear remarkably sensitive to fairness from an early age (Fehr, Bernhard & Rockenbach, 2008). Fairness touches on important psychological themes: belonging, cooperation, trust, status, and social relationships. When something feels unfair, strong emotions are often triggered.

Functional theories of emotion suggest that anger frequently emerges when goals are blocked or important expectations are violated (Frijda, 2006). The emotional message may be: "This shouldn't be happening. Sometimes that judgement is correct. Sometimes it isn't. Either way, the feeling is often very real.

The Difference Between Unfair and Unbearable

Psychologist Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), spent much of his career exploring why some situations create greater emotional distress than others (Ellis, 1962). One of his key insights was that events themselves are not always the main cause of distress. Instead, the beliefs we hold about those events can have a powerful influence on how we feel. For example, consider the difference between: "I don't like this" and "This absolutely must not happen" or: "This is unfair" and "This is unbearable." The first reaction acknowledges discomfort, the second often amplifies it.

According to Ellis, emotional suffering frequently increases when flexible preferences become rigid demands (Ellis, 1962).

Children Develop Fairness Expectations

Children naturally develop beliefs about how things should work: Friends should be kind; Teachers should be consistent; games should be fair; Rules should apply equally. Most of the time, these expectations make sense. Problems arise when reality fails to match them.

Children may conclude:

• "This shouldn't happen."

• "This isn't right."

• "This always happens to me."

• "Nobody understands."

These thoughts are understandable. However, they may also intensify emotional reactions. Appraisal theories suggest that the meaning assigned to events plays a major role in emotional experience (Lazarus, 1991).

The event matters. The interpretation matters too.

What Other Explanations Might There Be?

One useful question adults can explore with children is: "What else could be true?" Imagine a child who isn't invited to a birthday party. Their first interpretation may be: "They don't like me."

Perhaps that's true, but perhaps: numbers were limited, invitations were organised by parents,

the host chose children they know best, it had nothing to do with friendship at all. This does not mean dismissing the child's emotions, the disappointment remains valid. The aim is simply to encourage flexibility rather than certainty.

Psychologists refer to this process as cognitive reappraisal, changing the way a situation is interpreted in order to influence emotional experience (Gross, 1998).

Helping Children Avoid Thinking Traps

Children, like adults, sometimes fall into predictable thinking habits. For example: Catastrophising: "This is the worst thing ever." Overgeneralising: "Nobody likes me."

Mind Reading: "They're doing it on purpose." Black-and-White Thinking: "Everything is ruined."

These thought patterns can intensify emotional experiences.

Helping children identify alternative explanations can reduce their emotional impact (Ellis, 1962; Lazarus, 1991).

The goal is not forced positivity. The goal is balanced thinking.

Fairness and Frustration Tolerance

One of Ellis's most useful ideas was frustration tolerance (Ellis, 1962). In simple terms: Can a person tolerate situations they dislike? Children benefit from discovering that they can.

Something can be: disappointing, frustrating, annoying, unfair, without becoming intolerable.

This does not mean children should accept injustice passively. It means they can learn that difficult feelings are survivable. That lesson becomes a foundation for resilience.

The Difference Between Solving and Enduring

Some unfair situations can be changed. Others cannot. Both require different skills. If a child is being treated unfairly, adults should absolutely help advocate, problem-solve and seek solutions. However, some situations simply involve disappointment: losing a game, not being chosen first, receiving an unexpected consequence, or missing out on an opportunity. These experiences often provide opportunities to practise endurance rather than problem-solving.

Part of emotional maturity involves recognising the difference.

What Does This Mean for Adults?

When children are upset about unfairness, adults often feel pressure to: fix the situation,

explain it away, dismiss the feelings, provide immediate reassurance. Sometimes a more helpful response is curiosity. For example:

• "What feels unfair about it?"

• "What were you hoping would happen?"

• "What else might be true?"

• "How big will this feel next week?"

These questions encourage reflection without dismissing emotions.

Try This

The next time a child complains that something is unfair:

• Acknowledge the feeling.

• Ask what feels unfair about the situation.

• Explore whether other explanations exist.

• Distinguish between what can and cannot be changed.

• Discuss how difficult feelings can be tolerated and managed.

Questions for Reflection

Which situations trigger the strongest fairness reactions?

Are there beliefs that make unfair situations feel worse?

What helps develop frustration tolerance?

Key Takeaway

Children cannot be protected from every unfair experience, nor should they be. The goal is not to convince children that life is always fair. The goal is to help them recognise that unfairness, disappointment and frustration are part of life, and that difficult emotions can be understood, tolerated and managed.

Sometimes resilience begins with learning to say: "I don't like this" without concluding:

"I can't cope with this."

References

Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy.

Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., & Rockenbach, B. (2008). Egalitarianism in Young Children. Nature, 454, 1079-1083.

Frijda, N. H. (2006). The Laws of Emotion.

Gross, J. J. (1998). The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299.

Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and Adaptation.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1991). Learned Optimism.