Building Resilience
Building Mental Resilience in Children
The growing mental health crisis is a concern for all parents. All parents want to encourage their children to be resilient.
The pyschologist Jonathan Haidt has been doing a great deal of research in tracking the trends in child mental health. He see the changes in parenting in the 90s, along with the rise of social media and the almost universal ownership of mobiles phones by young children as the causes of the crisis.
Understanding Antifragility and Resilience
If we face a tough situation we can either move forward or run away. I read a book years ago call ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’. At the time I didn’t really understand it, but looking back I realise that the only way to face your fears is to get braver. If you wait until the fear goes away it never will. If you watch ‘The Fear Factor’ the contestants often feel much better for facing their fear of spiders or whatever. This is why trigger warnings and other ‘fear’ markers are so unhelpful as they make us look for ‘danger’ rather than ‘keeping calm and carrying on’. It’s like building mental muscles through facing and overcoming challenges. Additionally, Haidt delves into the significance of resilience, highlighting the importance of children bouncing back from tough times and emerging emotionally stronger.
The Dangers of Coddling
One of the key aspects of Haidt’s work is the exploration of the dangers associated with overprotecting and shielding children from every obstacle. He addresses the detrimental impact of “coddling” and its potential to hinder the emotional growth of children.
Haidt’s identification of the three great lies –
“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker,” e.g. stress or challenge may traumatise you which encourages catastrofising.
Instead, point out that we can’t get stronger without resistance. No challenge no growth!
“Always trust your feelings,” e.g. the whole ‘true to yourself’ thing.
Instead, try to revise negative feelings like ‘I hate maths’ into ‘I find maths difficult, but I am going to do my best’.
“Life is a battle between good people and evil people” – e.g. the world is a dangerous place of struggle
Instead, encourage them to see that no one is perfect and we can all learn and improve every day.
Nurturing a Balanced Environment
As parents, we’ve got a big role in this game. We need to create an environment where our kids can talk openly, take some risks, and learn from their challenges. It’s all about finding that balance between support and letting them spread their wings.
