Toughen UP

Toughen Up

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… we were all going to heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.   Some readers may recognize these words as the beginning of Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities.  There are lots and lots of quotes about life handing us lemons and what we can do with lemons to make them more palatable.  The point is that into every life a bit of rain will fall and we all have to learn to use an umbrella.

The skill of dancing in the rain is called resilience.  Somehow adults have decided that they have a very strong need to protect children from learning to get back on their feet and try again.   One of the advantages of participating in athletics is that kids learn how to lose and still stay on the field or court.  Why don’t we want our kids to learn those same skills as they navigate their lives.

Used to be that when kids got into trouble at school parents asked what the child had done to warrant the trouble.   The default position of parents was that a teacher would not be “out to get you” unless you had done something you were not supposed to do.

Now, however, the attitude is to protect and defend the child and to assume that the child’s perception of events is what actually happened.   So notes will come to school that say, “my child said that teacher made fun of him when he had trouble reading, why did you do that.”    The note does not say, “my son felt embarrassed yesterday when he had trouble reading, can you give me some more insight into what that situation might be?” The first response presumes the child’s perception of events is accurate and puts the teacher on the defensive and guilty until she is proven innocent.   The second response is characterized by two adults working toward a successful reading experience. Yet there is a third response that is more in the child's best interest.   Neither previous approach asks the child, “did you speak with your teacher about how you felt?”  This third approach empowers the child to solve his own problems.

College deans speak of helicopter parents who intervene with staff to rescue their offspring from negative experiences. Parents say things like "I do not want my child to struggle."  These same young adults grow up to not be able to deal with the various slings and arrows life will throw our way.   It is fine for caring adults to help a child or young adult navigate the comeback after a failure, but the navigation itself needs to be the responsibility of the child/young adult.  No successful adult runs from the worst of times.  Successful adults plow through them to reach the best of times.  That skill doesn’t just happen on a given birthday.  The training needs to start early on so the skill will be fine-tuned when life feels like we are all going direct the other way.