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It is important for children and teens to learn to accept that unfairness is inevitable but manageable.

Focusing upon outrage can accidentally teach your child life should be fair.

Focusing upon parent intervention can backfire.

Note to the reader: This post is about average everyday unfairnesses every child experiences, as opposed to the harm caused by racism, sexism, or other -isms 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-eater 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........

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