Tips For Raising Resilient Kids – Adam Grant

tl;dr? I think parents have always cared about resilience for their kids but… we have more over protective parents now…than we ever did in the past.  

 

We have parents who, you know, are kind of hovering around like helicopters. we have parents who raise their kids in bubbles. we have parents who make sure that their kids get a trophy for every single thing that they do. And I think because of that a lot of kids are actually sheltered from some of the setbacks that might actually help them practice the skills and resilience, and one of things as a parent that I found really powerful about this is when I’m going through a difficulty, I’ve started asking my kids for advice. Actually asking them “what would you do in a situation like this”, allows them to feel like…I trust their judgment.  

 

“It can normalize struggle for our kids and show them look, everybody has setbacks, everybody daces adversity.” My wife and I have three kids, our daughters are nine and six, and our son is three. I was preparing for a big speech and I was a little bit nervous and I went to one of our daughters and I said “what should I do” and she said “well, the first thing you should do is you should think about the times when you were nervous before, and it went really well, and that will, you know, kind of reassure you. And then you should also find somebody in the audience who’s smiling and to, you know, kind of gives you a little bit of encouragement and you should look at that person.” And so a few weeks later, she had a school play to be in and she was a little nervous and instead of me saying “oh here, I know the answer”. I said “well, what did you tell me to do when I was in that situation?” she remembered right away and she was really excited for the school play and, yeah, I even saw her kind of looking for the person in the audience who was beaming that she could connect with.  

 

Every kid faces adversity. In some cases it’s serious, but there’s also the minor setbacks that are part of every kid’s life. Failing a test, forgetting lines in a school play, being rejected socially. “They need the strength to be able to face them.” And say, look, I can get through this, and even be able to learn from that situation. The more that we can equip our kids to face difficulties and bounce back, not just to where they were before but stronger…the better their lives will end up being. 

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