Post Summary
Resilience is a key component of how we face adversity in life and bounce back. There are biological and environmental factors that help protect us, both innate and learned ways to respond to stressors. Support networks are an important facet, and in the long-term, failure can be a marker of growth! Parents are often the first source of guidance in a child's life, and it is for this guidance that children can learn how to cope with setbacks. Parental guidance can be difficult, and knowing when to step back is crucial; however, it's also developmentally necessary to allow for safe risk-taking on the part of the child or adolescent.
Toddler Struggles & How Resilience is Fostered
Humans are interesting creatures. Creatures of habit but also curious. I see it in my daughters, especially my toddler; she wants to interact with many things and know everything about anything. Her routines are simple, yet she quickly falls apart without them. If my wife and I are lax in her scheduling, failing to keep her mind and body active, she becomes restless. If she misses a nap at daycare, she’s a small tornado at home until bedtime. I have observed that when she feels safe, she’s the most outgoing and curious; however, when faced with a new environment or around new people, she’s a little more withdrawn and needs time to process.
However, one constant is how my wife and I support our child when she’s outside her comfort zone. We allow her space to get comfortable, but we always reinforce the importance of manners and let her know we are here to help her.
A small example - we’re in the checkout line at a grocery store, and the cashier offers her a few stickers. Typically, my daughter wants these stickers but is weary of the stranger offering them. I will reinforce that taking the stickers is okay because daddy is there and it’s safe. Once she has the stickers, I motion for her to give a “thumbs up” gesture if she’s unwilling to say “thank you.” I model this for her, saying thank you to the cashier, and we continue our afternoon. I also coach her on the cart ride back to the car that if someone does something nice for her, she should say thank you. It’s a work in progress…
What is happening now is multifold: my daughter is conflicted with her desire for a sticker but is uncomfortable interacting with a stranger. I want my girls to have good manners, so I model them and call attention to them to drive the point home. All of this is predicated on the fact that this is a safe situation to accept something from a stranger. Another aspect of these moments is that I continue to foster a secure connection with my daughter to bolster her confidence in talking with others and finding control in new situations. Conversely, I do not want my children to feel it is acceptable to give up on facing a challenging situation because they either lack the skills to navigate it or would not have the support needed to find a successful outcome.
Resilience Outlined
Resilience is a person’s ability to face adversity or hardship and overcome these challenges. Overcoming serious difficulties depends on compensatory strategies, skills, and support networks fostered early in life and evolving throughout development. Adapting to stressful situations requires helpful habits to alleviate pent-up feelings, a sense of connection to others, and finding successful pathways toward a resolution.
Life comes with its share of stressors; it’s impossible to avoid them, and in order to build resiliency, we must face a degree of barriers to learn from these experiences and grow from them. How these challenges present themselves may differ, and how a person handles them may also vary based on age, gender, socioeconomic status, and level of education. There are other factors, too, including religion, community support efforts, and overall developmental status.
Resiliency is a composite of biological protective factors and environmental conditioning through modeling conflict resolution, having strong social bonds with others, and learning from setbacks. The level of resilience varies from person to person, and intelligence does play a role in how humans adapt to and navigate their surroundings. However, traits such as a sense of humor can also help during exceedingly stressful times; it does matter how that humor is used.
Picture a blade of grass growing through concrete.
Building Resilience in Childhood
Children, by nature, are risk-takers, whether their parents like it or not. Impulsivity and lack of attention are expected in young children; their hardware and software are not yet advanced enough to compute the ongoing sensory input constantly being collected. Engaging in “healthy risks” can be beneficial for the child. An example is playing on a playground – there are risks of injury, but typically, these are safer play areas for children to explore and test their abilities. One child successfully tries out the monkey bars, while another grabs the first bar but immediately falls to the ground.
This is an opportunity to teach resilience to the child. After checking to ensure they are okay, the parent can help the child back up to the bars, support them as they grip the bar, and help guide them across the remaining bars to the end. During this exercise, provide encouragement to reinforce support and the child’s efforts, and then celebrate this retry.
If the child is scared, the encouragement to try again with guided support can help foster the belief that the child can accomplish the task and that they have support throughout the way.
These experiences also teach the child that they can be an agent of change for others!
Confidence comes from our experiences as long as we treat them as learning opportunities and take ownership.
When it comes to preparing their children for school, parents (or caregivers) can model appropriate turn-taking behaviors, sharing, and conflict resolution strategies with their child(ren) as a precursor to attending an educational environment like daycare or pre-k. In turn, the teachers and aids within these classrooms are also responsible for upholding best practices and guiding the children toward better strategies for successful academic and social-emotional outcomes.
These are rich opportunities for the child to self-advocate their needs to adults who can help them develop their language.
Children must struggle with confusing concepts and situations (within reason) and be taught how to manage them!
Parents and stakeholders must communicate with the child and model for them appropriate behaviors.
If you fall down, you get back up.
Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, a pediatrician, outlines the 7 C’s of resilience: competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control. How many C’s did you see in the monkey bar example?
Building Resilience in Adolescence
If we work from the foundation established in the previous section, we can extend our line of thinking into adolescence into young adulthood. Puberty is a tumultuous time in human development, an ever-present influx of innate physical, cognitive, and social-emotional changes prompted by external forces. Adolescence is viewed differently in different parts of the world, but the research shows that the brain and body are working continuously to upgrade a teenager’s output physically and mentally.
Adolescent development also brings about an increased level of awareness, both of self and the world around them. As a person’s cognitive processes become more advanced and complex, so do their thoughts, planning, and execution of tasks. We see motivation shifting from extrinsic (environmental) to intrinsic (self-defined), along with self-identity taking hold. In essence, the “Who am I? What makes me ‘me’” component of development.
Perhaps the reader of this post is an adolescent or the parent/teacher/stakeholder of a teenager. Either way, this level of human development is met with increased internal and external expectations. The stress level is raised to meet the increased demands, and the soon-to-be young adult is starting to feel the weight of these demands.
Let’s focus on a 13-year-old 8th grader who is also facing academic and social-emotional changes with the added developmental milestone of puberty. Here, we see a teenager starting to understand themselves and their thinking better, but who is also engulfed in the maelstrom that is adolescent development. The Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) or push-and-pull of dependence and yearning for independence.
Often, the focus for teenagers shifts from school and pleasing adults toward their peers and being accepted.
A rebellious spirit (within reason) is a typical and appropriate developmental response to adolescent development.
Teenagers need to push boundaries to see how others will respond and how they will be supported by those closest to them.
What remains consistent, however, are the factors that help foster resilience in a person. Supportive relationships, strategies to cope with stress, self-advocacy skills to mitigate problems, and adapting to new environments or challenges. It is important to point out that “stress” is not always bad; positive stressors benefit teenagers as manageable circumstances to test their skills and grow.
Take applying to college as an example. This multifaceted process often has strict deadlines, paperwork, and fees and requires coordinating with many people to apply to an institution. This process is made larger for a person with a disability and is often more confusing due to the intricate nature of what is expected in the application process. There is a lot of stake for the student and their family (and stakeholders); hopefully, many working parts need to coalesce to be successful. However, in many cases, the parents/caregivers/school counselors carry the ball down the field's length in place of the student. Why is that?
In order to be successful, you need to buy into the idea of success.
Helicopter/bulldozer Parenting
These are colloquial terms that you might have heard about or seen online. I don’t mean to comment that every parent who supports their child is a helicopter parent. Most parents support their children by guiding them based on their experiences and knowledge to avoid potential pitfalls.
However, some parents struggle with the idea that their child is no longer a child and will need to navigate the world on their own terms by making important decisions for themselves, regardless of the (positive or negative) consequences. Essentially, this approach involves continuously hovering over the teen/young adult or bulldozing all potential obstacles, preventing opportunities for struggle/resolution. I believe this is often done with the best intentions; however, the potential damage it can cause the child is worth noting, too.
The difficult reality is that setbacks and challenges can help bolster resiliency in children and young adults. I have seen select parents handling their child’s college application from start to finish, leaving the actual applicant with few responsibilities in this process. The reality here is the child is prevented from taking control of their decision-making and perhaps feeling alienated from their own future planning.
The child who has never needed to live up to expectations, struggle with situations, or face consequences has a diminished sense of self and a diminished sense of personal responsibility and will struggle physically/emotionally/psychologically when real-world stressors present themselves. Growing up, this child expects people to do what they want, and if not, a parent will step in to fix the situation in their favor. Realistically, this child/young adult will also struggle with self-efficacy because they may not have a strong sense of communicating their needs when a problem arises effectively.
Additional research is needed to establish a relationship between this parenting type and diminished resilience levels in children/young adults; however, the immediate effects are seen in educational institutions and the workplace. To the parents, remember you’re allowed to have high expectations for your child; they can still fail or fall short of their goals.
The immediate discomfort your child might experience doing something new or difficult is okay and an encouraging sign that they are trying to better themselves.
Real-world Strategies & Applications
Resilience, self-esteem, and self-efficacy are important aspects of how a person views themself in relation to the world around them; an internalized precursor to data collection when comparing self to others, but also protective measures against under or over-estimating self-worth and importance. In other words, protective measures from taking on a “funhouse mirror” view of oneself.
When goal-setting and evaluating effectiveness, a person needs to make sure the goals are realistic and monitor progress as a means of inspiration to keep going or problem-solve when setbacks arise.
It’s finding the balance between what is challenging but not completely outside the bounds of possible.
Ongoing monitoring of goals requires optimism (positive self-talk) and accessing feedback from others.
Accepting that failure can be part of the process; however, it is not definitive unless accepted as the final step.
Problem-solving requires a lot of brain power, but like any muscle group, it needs to be tested regularly to build strength.
In Summary
Human beings are innately wired to face challenges and apply what we learn from experiences to future situations. We look for patterns of behavior and respond to consequences, both from a personal experience and observing others; our curiosity leads us to watch how others interact with their environments and replicate what works. That is why establishing consistent boundaries with children is important; we can avoid special treatment of one while reinforcing expectations for all. However, this is easier said than done. When it comes to people with disabilities (visible or invisible), it can be difficult to keep consistent with expectations. However, even with the best intentions, this mistreatment can convey that a person with a disability is less capable than their non-disabled counterpart.
Take, for instance, the college application example above – if an applicant has a language-based disability, it’s understandable that he or she might struggle with reading application paperwork or recording notes for follow-up conversations. However, this does not absolve them of the responsibility of completing their applications. If anything, the struggles found here are an important reinforcement that attention to detail and problem-solving salutations are going to be essential for academic survival in the future, including the skills needed to ask for help when help is needed in a classroom, a dorm room, or anywhere else on campus.
If we reframe our thinking, this example could be a precursor to important job skill training. If a marketing firm hired this person, they would be expected to complete the same tasks as their co-workers, right? If this person needs assistive technology to access the content or to generate written work, those are wonderful adaptive avenues to remain productive in their job! It also means they would need to know how to use such technology and harness it to succeed; this process will require practice and troubleshooting before being used in a professional setting.
The difference here is that their parent or caregiver will not be involved when they struggle; no emails will be sent to a boss on their behalf about the strictness of writing deadlines.
Parents, I wanted to frame this post with the utmost respect and appreciation for all that you have done and continue to do to support your child. You are an invaluable resource in their life, a role model, and a champion for their needs. With that said, there is a time and place where you will need to step back and allow your child to struggle and possibly fail. It sucks. You don’t want to see them struggle and be upset; however, learning from failure is ultimately a long-term success!
Be a guide, but not a bulldozer for their success.
Do you agree with my sentiments? Have I missed anything in this overview? Let me know in the comments, and please sign up to continue this discussion!
Respectfully,
Dustin.
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