What’s Happened to Emotional Resilience?
Our children are increasingly less able to handle the routine hardships of life.
By Nancy Colier LCSW, Rev., Posted September 25, 2022
Three key points in the article were listed:
- Many children lack resilience and feel overwhelmed by life for a variety of reasons.
- Our culture may condition people to believe that they shouldn’t have to struggle.
- Difficulty and discomfort can build resilience and character.
Whilst reading this article about resilience and emotional intelligence, or perhaps, too often the lack of it in many people, not only yong children, many things have surfaced in my mind. Not only my own childhood experiences, some of which I am sharing below, but one part of a sentence in the article in particular, suggests the style of parenting being used by many young parents today, may end up causing harm, such as reducing their childrens resilience:
“…adjusting to other people’s wants and needs, and figuring things out without their parents’ help.“
Life is short in the scheme of things, and in my own personal experience, without emotional intelligence and resilience, it would have been a much tougher road. I was lucky that I was born an optimist, which helps, but, I also believe we have a choice on how we respond to everything, and whether we ar eoptimistic or not. It can be learned. We can choose to be negative, resentful or miserable, or, we can choose to be happy, and accepting. Everyone needs to learn how to figure life out for themselves, including our kids. It is up to us to learn how to get along in a world full of kindness and unkindness, of things that seem fair or unfair, and so on.
From a young age, children start to want to express themselves as indviduals, to move away from their parents, and whilst this can be hard, as all parents want for their children is to be well, and feel loved and protected, helicopter parenting can be quite damaging for the children.
We start off with what I call the ‘conveyor belt of values and beliefs’ that we derive naturally our parents, and then begin to adopt other values and beliefs as we meet and connect with other adults, e.g., grandparents, teachers, shop owners, adults in the community. At some stage in our younger years, many completely reject the values of their parents, until we work out what is best for us. That is often hard for parents and their children, and can cause much tension, even significant friction and anger between the generations.
Helicopter parenting can be due to many things, including overcompensation, i.e.,“Adults who felt unloved, neglected, or ignored as children can overcompensate with their children. Excessive attention and monitoring sometimes attempt to remedy the parents’ deficiency in their upbringing.”
I probably srarted out as a helicopter parent, as in my childhood experience was that of a highly dysfunctional family, with damaged parents who did no work to heal their own childhood wounds, resulting in alcoholism and untreated mental illness. These were the things I have had to work hard to recover from, to heal from, so as not to bleed all over the peope I love. It remains a work in progress…
My parents were my role models, but for how not to parent.
I’m sure I too made many mistakes as a parent, but I did not wish to make the ones I witnessed and experienced, as they have required ongoing, life long strategies to not only heal from, but to not behave the same way. Memories of hiding for hours, sometimes into the darkness, inside a self-made cubby house in the woodstack, which was sometimes the only way of feeling protected, and a way of hiding from the screaming, the abuse and the highly dysfunctional behaviour, continue to re-emerge.
For anyone who has seen the movie, “One Flew Over the Cickoo’s Nest”, that is what it was often like behind closed doors in my home, from my perspective. I especially loved it when visitors came, or we went out, as at least during those times, their best behaviour came out, and it was easier to bear. Not only did I love learning and therefore loved being at school, it was also a 10+ hour a day escape from the craziness and cruelty at home. My grandparents and one aunt, and the animals on the farm were also my saviours, especially Trixie, the horse I spent may hours riding and caring for.
For balance, the remoteness of the farm I lived on, and where we did not have electricity or running water for the first approximately 10 years of my life, the 90 minute bus ride to school each way, the lack of money, and most often having to make do, with hand-me-down clothes, having to all work hard, were not at all harmful; in many ways, they were the best parts fo my childhood. These things helped me develop flexibility, resourcefulness and resilience.
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