Resiliency seems to be the quality that is the best indication of how happy and and “well-adjusted” our kids turn out to be–not education, or advantages or how early they meet all the developmental milestones. While some people just seem to be more resilient than others, I believe there are things we can do to help foster resiliency in our kids–and it starts with developing resiliency in ourselves as parents.
I tell my kids that life isn’t about what happens–whether it’s to you or around you, it’s really about how you react. But talking is only one piece of the parenting puzzle. Actions go even farther in showing kids how to bounce and cope with the unpredictability and inevitable challenges that life sends our way. When I was a kid, my parents used to say “Life’s not fair” and while I understood the sentiment, I vowed I’d never use that with my own kids, it felt like an acceptance of inequality. Instead, I tell my kids we “all get our turn.” The personal value I want to convey is that I believe that sometimes it’s just our turn, the wheel of life keeps turning and turning and sometimes, it’s our turn for our blessings to be more pleasant and easy, and other times our blessings may be in disguise. Everything is temporary.
Does modeling resiliency mean that we parents never show our frustration or disappointment or grief? No, quite the opposite–facing and embracing our emotions and how much we care about what’s going on in life shows our kids that we can be tuned in without being decimated when things don’t go the way we’d like. Resiliency is about saying, “man this is hard and it sucks, but I’m not going to let it get me down or destroy my capacity for joy.”
While I don’t believe that talk is cheap, I do think that words of advice and wisdom need to be reinforced by our actions–especially for us parents. Showing our kids that we may get battered and bumped around sometimes by life, but we still get right back up and keep trying prepares them for their own trials and tribulations. If we let them think that everything is either always perfect or that we think we are victims of an unfair, hard life, they may not develop the bouncy resiliency that will prepare them for a long, challenging, rewarding life.