I promised you. After outlining the state of the problem behind our young people's serious intolerance of frustration, here are five tips drawn from my experience in mental training. Each comes with a recommended reading to dig deeper. These suggestions are concrete supports for parents and clubs/organisations: because we can choose between enduring a society that dumbs us down… or taking part in raising children who grow.
1. Restore words to soothe emotional pain
When language becomes impoverished, thought grows rigid. Reducing every emotion to "I'm so angry" prevents understanding what we feel and makes reactions impulsive, sometimes violent. The right word creates distance.
The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
Enriching a child's emotional vocabulary (and your own) is not a luxury—it's essential. Distinguishing irritation from anger, shame from sadness, opens a space for awareness. You can start with simple games, shared reading, and regular times to talk.
📚 To read: Words Are Windows (or They're Walls) – Marshall B. Rosenberg
2. Relearn patience… by setting the example
Screens have killed waiting. Everything must happen now. A brain that no longer waits is a brain that stops learning to delay its desires.
The time of waiting is the time when the brain builds itself.
— Boris Cyrulnik
It's not enough to tell a child to be patient: they need to see it. Removing screens at key moments (meals, journeys, evenings), embracing silence, cooking slowly, reading, thinking out loud… these are simple acts that rebuild the muscle of patience.
📚 To read: In Praise of Slow – Carl Honoré
3. Reject the tyranny of treating children as equals
By insisting on "dialoguing as equals," the adult abandons their role. A child left to their own devices gains not autonomy but insecurity. Authority is a responsibility, not a form of domination.
Authority is not an abuse of power; it is a duty of transmission.
— Aldo Naouri
Saying no, setting boundaries, and establishing stable, predictable rules: all of this structures the psyche. A child needs an adult who assumes their position of experience and relational intelligence—without violence, but without surrendering.
📚 To read: Authority Explained to Parents – Aldo Naouri
4. Rebuild real connection: share the same time together
In many families, everyone lives on their screens. Eye contact, listening, and real presence have become rare. Yet emotional self-regulation is born from connection.
A child learns to be alone if first they have been alone in the presence of someone.
— D.W. Winnicott
Share moments without phones or tasks to accomplish: cook together, take aimless walks, play board games. These simple, low-stakes moments provide a lasting foundation of emotional security.
📚 To read: The Capacity to Be Alone – D.W. Winnicott
5. Limit digital games: they frustrate more than they soothe
A digital game simulates stakes but builds no real skill, memory, or relationship. It occupies… then leaves a void.
What we possess is only valuable in terms of what we become.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Nothing is ever truly won in a digital game. Frustration resurfaces immediately. By contrast, non-digital games (where you wait your turn, where you can truly lose) teach sharing, patience, and emotional management. They are powerful educational levers.
📚 To read: The Making of the Digital Idiot – Michel Desmurget
🌱 Conclusion: Reclaiming our role
It's not only the child who must relearn to manage frustration. It's the adult first: to understand it, to embody it, to pass it on.
In a world that numbs us with instant gratification, the adult must become again a steady mental tutor—a beacon in the fog of the feed. This requires courage, clarity, and endurance. But it yields rare fruits: inner strength, the ability to choose, to wait, and to get through.
Because growing up is not about getting everything, right away. It's about learning to desire. To wait. To lose. And to keep going anyway.
So here are a few recommendations to understand why, today, managing one's emotions has become a defining challenge of our time and why the ability to handle frustration will become the tool of the greatest—and likely the key to Happiness.
👦 Mental training program for under-13s
🧑 Mental training program for under-17s
🧩 Read Part 1: Understanding frustration
To learn more about managing emotions or discover how to develop self-confidence in young athletes, check our specialised articles.