"Kids are resilient!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents use that line to justify bad choices that they know hurt their child. That’s the only time I’ve ever heard it used.

It’s the parents job to be resilient - young kids shouldn’t be forced to be.

+1000

It is a phrase used to justify bad parenting/ adult behavior, particularly having to do with divorces and affairs.

[Anonymous]

It’s a buzzword based on bad pop psychology, like “grit,” that functions as a way to place all the burden of societal dysfunction on individual parents and children.

[Anonymous]

It’s because adults want to do what they want to do without being made to feel guilty about it.

Obvious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am divorced. I feel like people who get divorced say this all the time to absolve themselves of guilt about the divorce and subsequent moves, housing decisions, school changes, remarriages. I think it's a horrible thing to say and so selfish

Why don’t you work through your guilt with your therapist instead of crapping on other divorced people?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s because adults want to do what they want to do without being made to feel guilty about it.

Obvious.

This.

[Anonymous]

Wow, I disagree completely with OP and most of the posters, evidently! Resilience does not mean unscathed. It means that you can go through the fire and not let it destroy it.

I do think kids are resilient. I think people are resilient, often far more than we know! It doesn't mean that we will never experience negative effects when something bad happens, it means that we will hurt, we will grieve, we will sorrow, but we will carry on. Not everybody, unfortunately, but most people. And, that resiliency, that ability to pick up the pieces somehow, even when the worst happens, that is resiliency and it starts in childhood, sometimes with small hurts, but sometimes with big hurts.

Kids are resilient does not mean that kids will never suffer any effects from something bad happening that they experience. It means that when kids DO experience bad things (as we all will), they will probably be ok.

My parents divorced and it was hard, and yeah, it built resiliency. My sister died as a child and it sucked and was terrible. My mom said she wanted to die. But instead she found the strength to keep on going, probably largely because of her other kids, and eventually she was mostly ok. Not every day and not in every moment, but mostly, yeah, she was ok. She was resilient enough to build a life beyond that. My parents died, and it was hard, but it built resiliency. I've lost 2 children at birth and I did not think I would ever smile again, but you know what? I'm mostly ok. It makes me sad and I still grieve but still I am here, surviving and having a mostly happy life. That is what resiliency is.

[Anonymous]

I posted above in support of resiliency being a good thing on the first page. I think the whole divorced parents saying it to make themselves feel better while they do effed up things is uniformly wrong.

Dedication is a good thing to teach but when you’re forcing your kids into 3 hours of daily piano lessons they hate then you’re warping the skill with your own issues into a negative thing. Same with anything.

[Anonymous]

There are levels of resiliency. I will push my kids to be resilient in some ways - like playing a difficult piano piece until they get it right. But I will not dismiss my own bad parenting by saying they are resilient and will get over it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents use that line to justify bad choices that they know hurt their child. That’s the only time I’ve ever heard it used.

It’s the parents job to be resilient - young kids shouldn’t be forced to be.

This.

[Anonymous]

I see people using this phrase for their kids when they are guilty of something.

This could be selfishness on pushing their own agenda on kids' cost or doing things that is definitely No No or make them looks bad. It happens when they want to own the results and expect kids to do ok with it by saying this phrase. Horrible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am divorced. I feel like people who get divorced say this all the time to absolve themselves of guilt about the divorce and subsequent moves, housing decisions, school changes, remarriages. I think it's a horrible thing to say and so selfish

Why don’t you work through your guilt with your therapist instead of crapping on other divorced people?

Why don't you work with your anger and not get reactive if something is said. Yes, it is very common phrase used by adults when they didn't know good in the benefit of their kids. My ex-wife does that all the time when she brings a new bf in the house after knowing him for 4-5 weeks.

[Anonymous]

Because it's largely, true, with the exception of UMC kids, they aren't resilient, by any stretch of the word.

Unlike most I don't think it's a justification for bad choices by adults, it's just a different way of saying kids don't need to be as coddled and overly pathologized the way they are, which brings me back to UMC kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Giving people the benefit of the doubt, most don’t realize that resilience has a very specific meaning in clinical contexts, including the pandemic. One problem is when people mean “flexible” and instead they say “resilient.” Another is that too many people *don’t* understand the stress/trauma for children associated with the pandemic, and the implications of that stress, and rationalize their decisions to do any number of things that contribute to that stress by telling themselves that “kids are resilient.”

Where I heard the latter most was around school-reopening decisions. Generally: we don’t need to reopen schools because “kids are resilient,” which is utter horsesh*t. (And don’t get me started in how these same people are now pleading for “time” because they’re “anxious” about taking their masks off outside.)

Many kids are resilient to bad things that happen to them, in the appropriate meaning of the word. But even if many are, we can’t ignore those who are not just to make ourselves feel better.

Nobody cares if you don't like them wearing masks when you don't agree.

Grow up and mind your own business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents use that line to justify bad choices that they know hurt their child. That’s the only time I’ve ever heard it used.

It’s the parents job to be resilient - young kids shouldn’t be forced to be.

This.

Absolutely. Security and affection make children into resilient adults. Not heartbreak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Giving people the benefit of the doubt, most don’t realize that resilience has a very specific meaning in clinical contexts, including the pandemic. One problem is when people mean “flexible” and instead they say “resilient.” Another is that too many people *don’t* understand the stress/trauma for children associated with the pandemic, and the implications of that stress, and rationalize their decisions to do any number of things that contribute to that stress by telling themselves that “kids are resilient.”

Where I heard the latter most was around school-reopening decisions. Generally: we don’t need to reopen schools because “kids are resilient,” which is utter horsesh*t. (And don’t get me started in how these same people are now pleading for “time” because they’re “anxious” about taking their masks off outside.)

Many kids are resilient to bad things that happen to them, in the appropriate meaning of the word. But even if many are, we can’t ignore those who are not just to make ourselves feel better.

Nobody cares if you don't like them wearing masks when you don't agree.

Grow up and mind your own business.

The point
Your head