Resilience: On Bouncing Back From Adversity

I read an article recently about dealing with, or leaning into, discomfort.   It basically makes the point that we need to keep the art of resilience alive, both by being resilient ourselves and by teaching it to our kids.   Since reading this, I have come across further articles about how we’re raising kids that are not as emotionally strong or industrious as past generations, and about obsessing over our kids being happy can cause problems for them in adult life...

Well.  This is a hot button for me. 

And I am not a parent and I am going to talk about kids, which may be a hot button for you. 

Let’s lean into the discomfort of that, shall we? 

Back in the old days, people knew all about adversity.  Even kids knew about not making the team and relatives and pets dying and not getting what they wanted for Christmas and birthdays because their parents couldn’t afford it.   They knew for a fact that life was unfair sometimes and so they developed coping mechanisms.   Some said, maybe next time, or you win some, you lose some, or the cloud has a silver lining, or God works in mysterious ways.  They grew up with disappointment, and they had to grow thicker skins so that it didn’t bruise the hell out of them through life.   Some people stayed bitter to...well...the bitter end, but many folks chose to remain resilient and bounce back from disappointment.   

You can’t sharpen a razor on velvet.  You can’t get strong unless you encounter resistance.   If things are too soft, there’s not enough friction to have an effect.   In order to build resiliency, there has to be some kind of adversity to bounce back FROM.   Bouncing only occurs when you hit something hard and are flexible enough to ricochet off it.   Otherwise, you can’t do it.   When trouble hits, you flounder.   You don’t know what to do, because you haven’t the experience that tells you what to do.   You only get that experience FROM going through difficulties and problem-solving your way through them.  Remember trial-and-error?   First you try a solution, and if you get an error, then you adapt it or try something new until you find something that works.  You’re using ingenuity, and at the same time, developing those inventive parts of the brain that will aid you in future problem-solving, under similar circumstances.  You’re also developing confidence in yourself, in your ability to handle problems on your own, which is the TRUE source of the self-esteem we all want our kids to have.   How can we expect our kids to be able to stand up and smile proudly and say “I DID IT!” with a fistpump...if they DIDN’T do it, if WE did it for them?   They can’t.  

How can they learn to tie their shoes if we give them shoes with Velcro?   How can they learn to cut their meat if we never give them whole pieces of steak or chicken, but always do the cutting for them?  How can they learn how to push through the math problems and figure out HOW to do it if we do their homework for them?   How will they learn to write essays and papers and get into college, and THROUGH college (which is chock FULL of essay/paper writing!), if we write their entrance essay for them when they apply to schools?   How will they ever learn how to budget their money, fill out job applications properly, complete their driving tests, pay off their monthly credit card bills at a decent low level so they don’t run themselves into debt, and so much more, if we don’t teach them how to do it themselves?   These things and more are rites of passage in our culture.  Mantles of responsibility we took on our own shoulders only because we had taken smaller ones on all of our lives, gradually getting heavier over time, so we could handle the accumulated weight in increments.   And if we didn’t have the luck of having parents to show us how to handle these things early on, we had to figure them out for ourselves, either sinking or swimming.    We had responsibility put squarely on our shoulders.  And we learned from it.  We had to. 

So why are we so squeamish about letting discomfort fall on our kids’ shoulders?  Why are we so over-protective of them?   And what in Jehosephat’s name are we trying to protect them FROM?   Skinned knees?   Falling down?   Verbal insults?   Having to work hard, either mentally or physically?   What makes these things so unbearable to us to have our kids to deal with?   Did you have to go to therapy because you fell down when you were four and got a cut on your leg?  No, you got a scar and a story to tell.   Were you emotionally crushed when you had to cut the lawn every week during the summer, help with the dishes and laundry?   No, you gained both experience in how to do household chores and a work ethic.   Did you shrink up and die every time someone called you a name?   No, you grew a thicker skin and learned clever ways to give as good as you got, and then as you got older, you learned to ignore the stupidity and not take it personally.    

You had to do all of these things.   No one could protect you from this.  It’s called “life”.   We get bumped and knocked around in life, and learning how to withstand it and sometimes fight back, when it’s called for, makes us stronger people.   To sanitize the world and remove the germs and bullies and sharp rocks and disappointment of not getting what they want may create safer kids, but it also creates dependent, neurotic ones who fall apart when life doesn’t coddle them.  No one wants to see their kids recoil in fear against something they (the parents) can’t control, but preventing them from ever dealing with disappointment or getting hurt is not making it better for them—in fact, on the contrary...it hurts them.   They have no confidence, no self-reliance, no resilience, and it’s taking them longer to grow up...if they ever do.   They grow up feeling like perpetual children, and see themselves as victims, for that’s what we’re encouraging them to be.   And this, my friends, is a grave disservice—not only to the children, but to the world as well.  

How will they function as adults?   How will they cope with life’s speedbumps?   Even more importantly, with its maelstroms like divorce, losing jobs, and death?   If you think they can’t handle the family pet’s death, how are you preparing them for your own eventual departure?   If they always make the team without testing their mettle, how do you think they’re going to handle it when they don’t get the job they want so desperately?  We need to let our kids lose sometimes, so that they learn how to deal with loss.   They need to develop coping mechanisms; they can’t do this if they are never up against anything to cope with.  They need to grieve, then they need to realize they can overcome grief and move on, getting back up on the horses that threw them.   This is how we encourage them to become resilient adults.   And resilient adults are happier adults, so sayeth the experts, as well as the grown-ups who are themselves resilient.  

Let's remember the greater good, my lovelies.  Let's remember the bigger picture.   Let them make mistakes and learn from them.   Let them fail so they can understand what they did right when they earn success.  Let them know that there is always the option of  “Plan B” if “Plan A” doesn’t work, and that they are perfectly capable of figuring it out.   Let them know you expect them to persevere in whatever they do.  Let them lean into discomfort so that they aren’t paralyzed when they feel it. 

Let them experience the true spectrum of being human, warts and all.