Abstract

The study of child psychology and how our children grow and develop is an amazing field. There are many things involved with our children’s well being as they grow into adults. Some of the influences children have and the impressions they are left with will follow them the rest of their lives. It is important to understand that all children deserve a caring, nurturing, loving environment to grow in no matter the circumstances. Children are very resilient and can bounce back from almost anything making the job as parents that much easier. Children are not born resilient but are rather taught to be resilient through triumph and tragedy. The more resilience they develop as children the more resilient they will be as adults. Rearing our kids is not an art it is a science where the proper combination of self regulation, discipline, trust, and encouragement will create a relationship between parents and children that will flourish and provide years of happiness.
Keywords: Children, resilience, psychology, parenting, trust, discipline, encouragement.

Child Resiliency

Children raised by adversity can grow up to be some of the most resilient adults. Adversity and challenge is what makes us who we are. The ability to think through challenges and problem solve builds the mental framing that is needed to overcome adversity. Even as children there are times when we learn about insight, independence, relationships, initiative, creativity, and morality. We are either taught resilience or we learn it on our own, usually the hard way. It is a parent’s obligation to teach and grow resilient children that will be productive in society and be fully aware of their surroundings at all times. Parents must support and nurture children and provide the best possible environment for them to grow in. This doesn’t always mean a nice house in a nice neighborhood. A good growing environment is one of understanding, caring, and support. This is not always the ideal situation and things can be worse before they are better. One such worse method of teaching children resilience is through child abuse and neglect. It is certainly not an acceptable way for children to learn resilience but it does happen. The willpower of the child will determine whether they are able to overcome and triumph from this harsh form of learning. One such child was not only able to overcome but to thrive beyond the abuse and neglect. Writer Dave Pelzer’s story was one of the most well known neglect cases in California in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Dave was the recipient of beating, stabbing and everything in between. His family, mainly his mother due to alcoholism, physically and mentally abused him for years. Using Insight Dave was able to separate himself from his dysfunctional family unit and know that he was not part of that chain of abuse but rather his own person. Creating boundaries Dave was able to be independent enough to take care of himself. He really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. The building and nurturing of relationships is important whether facing child abuse or just spending time in the park after school. Relationships and the desire to feel loved will conquer most forms of neglect. Taking initiative is another skill that Dave learned to use in order to maintain some sort of control even though his hateful mother was controlling him. Through creativity and humor we can overcome many difficult times in our lives. There are many times when a good joke or reframing of an event in order to see it in a different light will cause the event to not be as bad as we once thought. This is actually a key point in resilience. Everything we encounter in life is an individual event. Everyone encounters events differently depending on our perspective. If we use creativity and humor to reframe the way we feel about the events we can in essence change the outcome of the events. Morality is a core value that Dave clung to in times of despair. There were times however when morality did not serve him well and he doubted everything. Morality is simply knowing right from wrong and choosing thusly the right path. (Waibel-Duncan & Yarnell, 2011)

Broken Dreams

A child living out their parent’s unfulfilled dreams is a reality that many children unknowingly live with every day. Everyone wants to feel successful but not all of our dreams are fulfilled throughout our lifespan. This can sometimes leave emptiness or voids that need to be filled. Based off of the Symbolic self-completion theory, parent use their children to live out their dreams. Parents either encourage or force their kids to join a sports team or to become doctors or lawyers. Parents try to fulfill their own dreams by having their children complete and be successful at it. Children become an extension of their parent’s lives rather than choosing their own path and chasing their own dreams. Studies have shown that “Parents generally experience more meaning in life than non-parents do … but little is known about how parents derive meaning from parenthood. Our research may solve one part of this puzzle: Parents may derive meaning from parenthood by vicariously resolving their unfulfilled ambitions through their children. Basking in children’s reflected glory, parents’ feelings of regret and disappointment about their own lost opportunities may gradually resolve, and make way for pride and fulfillment.” This can be accomplished outside of the parent/child relationship. Adults can use other adults but the parent/child relationship is where this is found the most since the bond between parents and their children in most cases cannot be broken. Parents and children are genetically bound. Another reason for this phenomenon is that children have many more years ahead of them to fulfill the dreams of their parents. (Brummelman, Thomaes, Slagt, Overbeek, Orobio de Castro & Bushman, 2013)

Duct Tape parenting

There are many ways to raise kids but all situations and people are different so there will never be a singular right way. Rearing children can be a daunting task that not everyone is up for. Ask any parent today how prepared they were for having children the answer might surprise most people. Usually having a child is a big unknown and that includes how to take care of and raise that child. Most parents sit and dream about parenting before it happens. They imagine the nurturing and loving they will provide their kids. Parents will often make a promise that they will be attentive and let their children have the freedoms that they might not have had while growing up. These dreams are often shattered by the harsh reality that the once obedient 1 year old turns out to be a very opinionated 9 year old who is not listening or following anyone’s rules or guidelines. Parents often feel like they have lost control throughout the process of raising their children and might feel like there is no hope in sight. Some may wonder if the child is actually in control and the parent is left on the sideline to pick up the pieces and clean up the messes. This does not have to be the case at all. Most parents were raised in the manner that the adult is in total control of the household and that the children are there to listen and obey. This is fine but it restricts creativity and freethinking. We all ended up fine today but can agree that it took a little longer for some of us to find our way and despite the dictatorship we lived in we were not as obedient as we let on. We were obedient out of fear rather than out of pure respect. What happens is a catch 22 of Band-Aid parenting. We as parents spend so much of our time trying to make things the way we want that we lose track of the important factors of caring and respect. Parents tell their kids all the time how to act or where to sit. We tell them how to dress and walk behind our kids so much that they become accustomed to us doing it. Children learn and know that we will be there to pick it up or put it away so they don’t bother to worry about it so much. The worst that could happen to the kids when this happens is they get a lecture in the process or get yelled at for not doing something right. This causes a shut down and kids just tune us out anyway. What is missing is the common respect and letting kids do it and learn. There are many times in our parenting that we really need to just step back and put on the “duct tape” in order to let our children learn and grow. The kids are fighting and yelling back and forth, we need to put on the duct tape on ourselves to keep us from getting involved. They don’t want to do their chores, we should put duct tape over our mouths and let them not work but also not give them allowance either. Kids forget their important paperwork for school, we need to duct tape our hands and let the paper sit there and let them get in trouble for what they did. We need to let nature teach them like it has taught us growing up. If you burn yourself once or twice or even 50 times eventually you will learn to be a little more careful and not grab hot pans. As long as they are not putting themselves or anyone else around them in danger then we should let them learn from their mistakes. There are going to be many times when we will not be around to tell kids what is right and what is wrong. They are going to have to learn it on their own for the most part. There will be times when it is freezing cold outside and they don’t bring their scarf, gloves, or hat for whatever the reason might be. They will be cold (briefly) while catching the bus or on the playground. They will learn that if they don’t have the proper clothing on that they are going to be cold. Parents are not doing their children any favors by sheltering them and picking up after them. All parents are doing at that point is raising kids who will grow into the real world not knowing responsibility. (Hoefle, 2012)

Everyone has methods of raising kids and although not all are perfect the majority of discussion involving resilient children revolve around these 10 methods.

1. Don’t accommodate every need: by letting kids make mistakes and fall on their face it also gives them the opportunity to get back up, dust off and see what they will do next rather than just lay there on the ground sobbing. We have to let them know it is ok to fall but the next step is to get up and try again.
2. Avoid eliminating all risk: there will be risks involved in everyday life that sometime we cannot control. We as parents want to keep our kids safe and the only real way to do that is to start when they are young. We give them age appropriate freedom, which teaches them to learn and know their own boundaries.
3. Teaching kids to problem solve: like teaching kids to do math. We are not going to be there when the test is taken so why would we sit and give them all the answers on their homework.
4. Teaching kids concrete skills: in order to solidify future behaviors. Showing kids different ways to do things they might not be as inclined to do. Letting them choose the best way for them to proceed.
5. Avoid why questions: instead of asking why and getting the response that answers the question (sometimes sarcastically). In order to spark the needed interest we have to ask the “how” questions so that we can extract an answer that will point our child in the problem solving direction. These problem solving answers are self teaching answers that will help guide children rather to finding their own solutions rather than telling them solutions directly.
6. Don’t provide all the answers: as stated above, giving the solution is not always the solution. We have to let kids learn their own ways even if they fail from time to time. The learning does not start unless mistakes are made. The earlier this process of making mistakes and learning to correct them on their own, the more cognitive children will grow up to be.
7. Avoid talking in catastrophic terms: this is usually a sign of anxiety in parents and if not handled properly will result in children getting the wrong impression and eventually repeating the behavior. We should speak to our children using only the facts rather than prophesizing about what “might” happen in a worst case such as, “Mary I need you to look both ways before you cross the street” not “I need you to look both ways before you cross because if you were to get hit by a car that would be the worst thing that could happen and I wouldn’t be able to live without you.” Yes we want our children to understand why we love and care about them but we don’t want to catastrophize events. This turns the attention on us and not our children.
8. Let your kids make mistakes: in order for kids to learn from the consequences of their actions they first have to experience failure. Without failure they can’t see the whole story from start to finish. They must try to do something, see the failure when it comes, and then correct and try again. This is how we as adults learn and it is no different from how kids learn.
9. Help them manage their emotions: emotion management is just as important for children as it is for adults. We have to be able to draw the lines of acceptable behavior without getting pulled in to the emotional feud. Once the line is drawn make sure that it is not negotiable. Kids will play off of whatever emotions they can in order to get what they want. The bottom line is that if we can’t control our emotions it is a pretty good indicator that our kids emotions will also not be controllable.
10. Model resiliency: kids do learn from observation. They will most certainly attempt to model our behavior. None of us are perfect but in a perfect world we can, at a minimum, admit to our faults and work together for a future resolution. We must be as consistent as possible in order to get the point across. (Tartakovsky, 2013)

The moral to this story is that resilience is within all of us young and old. Resilient people don’t grow on trees but can be created through life’s challenges. By taking a hands off approach to teaching and a hands on approach to caring we can nurture our children and they will show us we will have nothing to worry about in the future. We must act now and guide our kids at the earliest ages in order to instill the life lessons they will need later on. The most important thing to remember is that caring, loving, and supporting will mold kids more than scolding and forcing rules. Avoid resentment and enable kids to make the right decisions.

References

Brummelman, E., Thomaes, S., Slagt, M., Overbeek, G., de Castro, B.O., et al. (2013) My Child Redeems My Broken Dreams: On Parents Transfering Their Unfulfilled Ambitions onto Their Child. PLoS ONE 8(6): e65360. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065360

Hoefle, V. (2012). Duct tape parenting: A less is more approach to raising respectful, responsible, and resilient kids. Brookline, MA: Bibliomotion, Inc. DOI: www.bibliomotion.com

Tartakovsky, M. (2013). 10 Tips For Raising Resilient Kids. Psych Central. Retrieved on July 27, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/10-tips-for-raising-resilient-kids/00017272