"Kids are resilient!"

[Anonymous]

If you are someone who says this, why do you say it? Do you actually believe it? Or do you say it because you really want it to be true?

To me it makes no sense. Adults who are in therapy are often in therapy for issues stemming from childhood. ACE scores predict things as diverse as diabetes, obesity, education attainment levels, adult salaries, etc. Childhood bullying has been shown to have impacts in adults. From what I see, there is a mountain of data that shows that kids aren't resilient and that saying that they are is, at best, wishful magical thinking. At worst, the saying is used as a cover for abusive or otherwise awful behavior. It feels like gaslighting to me, a way of diminishing the trauma that children endure.

I'm a parent of teens now, and at this point, if someone uses that phrase, I start to get pretty skeptical of what they are saying. This is just based on my experience, but it made me wonder: why do you say it?

[Anonymous]

Some people have resilient kids and those people tend to generalize.

[Anonymous]

It depends on what you are referring to.

If you are talking about stuff that just happens and no one has any control over it, and you just want to reassure a parent that their kid will survive this, then yes, kids are resilient. Or at least they can be. Take Covid. It sucks! I've worried so much this year about its impact on my kid. But I do comfort myself that humans generally are pretty resilient, and that if we put in effort and make the best of things, my kid will get through this crazy time okay. I have to believe that.

But yeah, kids have to learn resiliency, and they usually do that by having resilient parents who are patient with them and demonstrate/teach social-emotional skills that will help them get through life. You don't teach a kid to be resilient by abusing him, and you are 100% right that the impact of trauma on children can last a lifetime -- just ask my therapist.

I think the key is to remember that kids have the capacity for resiliency, but that they are still young, impressionable people who need a lot of guidance and love. If a child goes through something traumatic, they have a great capacity to heal and learn and move forward, but they will need help just like anyone would.

A lot of times people just don't want to deal with consequences, so they just assume kids will forget about awful things they go through and then they won't matter. That's false.

[Anonymous]

I absolutely use this phrase, but I would never use it in the contexts you're talking about. Nothing on the ACE list for sure (violence, abuse, lack of love, lack of basic needs, an alcoholic parent, etc.)

I'm more of a free-range parent, and I use it for things like:

-Sleep training
-Letting kids handle things like ordering a pizza, walking to the park by themselves, navigate the metro, etc.
-Timeouts/similar types of discipline
-Making kids do chores and contribute to the household
-Letting kids fail - not being willing to step in with a mean or unfair teacher, for example.
-Forcing kids to do things like play independently from a young age.

I don't think I used this exact phrase in my posts, but it's the kinda of thing I would say in response to hand wringing over "inappropriate" literature, like in this thread: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/976044.page

[Anonymous]

“Resilient” = bouncing back from typical disappointments, changes, etc. Moving to a new school and making new friends. Losing their lovey and picking a new one. It’s not the same as getting through abuse/neglect without issue.

I used it in regards to wearing masks this year. Not one kid at my son’s private school had any issues with masks after the first week. They adapted and moved on.

[Anonymous]

People say this about bad things that happen to kids and I don't think it's true. Abuse, parent addiction, divorce... kids need therapy and to talk through it all. Life has a lot of big changes and kids need help bouncing through adverse life effects.

[Anonymous]

I think of it more in terms of, kids can handle hard things when given the right support. They can be resilient, but do need the proper support for whatever it is that happens.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

I've said this.

When bad things happen there are kind of two choices, you let it destroy you or you figure out how to move past it.

Kids are very good at, for lack of a better word, surviving. They persevere. Like another person said, this doesn't mean that you don't care about the kid or that you don't ensure that you are a loving presence in their life or that they aren't allowed to feel sad/hurt/etc. It just means that they likely will be ok eventually, particularly if you are there for them, if they experience something bad. Even something ACE level bad, although I don't think people should be flippant at all about those events.

Relatedly, resiliency is a skill not just an innate thing, and it is a valuable, perhaps INvaluable, skill for adulthood. Being able to bounce back from disappointment, sadness, struggle, that is an important ability. And modeling it and helping your child learn it, while not encouraging them to bottle up their emotions, is difficult but IMO a really important part of parenting. Parents who shield their child from everything, or who allow them to wallow in sadness disproportionate to an event are not doing their child any favors.

It is a thin and delicate line to know when you are helping your child process emotion to move forward vs trying to shut down their emotional process. But again, its important.

[Anonymous]

My kids are adults now. I parented in a way that helped build resiliency because I think it is one of the most important life skills one can have. I am very resilient. My kids are resilient. They have faced challenges and overcome them many times. I believe kids are naturally resilient- it’s how we have survived as humans. Parents are the ones who destroy resilience, sadly.

[Anonymous]

^^and to the point directly above mine (I’m 15:48, talking about 15:44), that gets right to the heart of the school issue. Schools are a thing that help many children cope. When you take that away, you take away a critical support structure that affords their resilience. So, it’s really injurious to remove a needed support and tell people they’re “resilient” and don’t need the thing you just removed.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

I don’t know. It seems like a reasonable thing to say in a more or less casual conversation.
My husband had a pretty serious illness when my kids were little, and when I told some of the parents at school what was going on, one if them asked me (in front of a group of people) how I was helping my kids cope with the trauma of having their dad suddenly uprooted from their lives. It was really inappropriate and off-putting.

Saying “kids are resilient” is not necessarily a statement of fact, but one of those social niceties that lubricates difficult conversations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are adults now. I parented in a way that helped build resiliency because I think it is one of the most important life skills one can have. I am very resilient. My kids are resilient. They have faced challenges and overcome them many times. I believe kids are naturally resilient- it’s how we have survived as humans. Parents are the ones who destroy resilience, sadly.

Resiliency is a result of temperament plus the resources that allow families to avoid or cushion traumas. You didn’t have any magic parenting skills - you got lucky.