I could have rescued my daughter from disappointment. Here's why I didn't

A few weeks ago, my daughter came home from second grade, and she told me she wasn’t invited to her friend Samantha’s birthday party. I asked her if she knew how many kids were invited, and she told me twenty. I was incensed. It was a big party, not a small, exclusive gathering, and my baby was left out. I knew that, in that moment, I could do two things: acknowledge that being left out hurts, or pick up the phone and call Samantha’s mom to secure an invitation. I had to deliberately focus on th