Child Rearing – Resilience #2

Resilience: the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.  (See Pt 1)

The songs have it: “It’s a wonderful world.”  And “it’s a small world after all.”  But also, it’s a hard world.  In rearing children, then, we’re preparing them for the hardships that almost certainly wait for them in their adulthood: e.g., long periods of tedium, getting laid off from work, entering the “valley of the shadow,” a lingering feeling of being “stuck,” declining health, relationship betrayal, frustration with society, sticking with the hapless Denver Broncos…

If they leave our care without being prepared for such hard times, we’ve let them down.  

Two more tips for cultivating resilience in our children:

• Be thoughtful with praise. The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.  (Proverbs 27:21).  

Crucible…furnace…praise.  Well! It seems that applause brings the heat, and the Proverbs’ suggestion is that one could easily be burned by it.  

Here’s an observation: the society we live in tends to over-hype.  (Note that Sally gets a yard sign for passing fifth grade.)  Now here’s a suggestion: From a very young age, your child should be praised only when s/he earns it, for extra-ordinary effort and accomplishment.  

Go ahead and give an earnest “thanks” and a big smile when Johnny draws you a picture, but plleeaassee don’t exclaim over it like you’ve seen Mona Lisa 2.0.  A child who grows up under constant fawning and over-hyped praise is ill prepared for adulthood.  So dole out praise thoughtfully, which will often mean sparingly.  

From a very young age, your child should be praised only when s/he earns it, for extra-ordinary effort and accomplishment.

• At every stage of parenting, work at placing good books in the hands of your kids.

When they’re in early elementary school, DEMAND that they become readers…even bibliophiles.  Aside from the Gospel and Church, good literature blesses a child like nothing else.  And protects.  I’ve long suspected that the proliferation of PTSD diagnoses in the modern west has some relation to the literature we’ve consumed, or haven’t. 

Find good literature that is age appropriate. Here and here are two reliable guides.  I offer a bold conjecture: There is so much excellent literature for every age level in the world, the Holy Spirit must have been behind that abundance!  Seriously, I could go on and on about “Where the Red Fern Grows,” “Goodnight, Moon” (they even put the book to song), “Charlotte’s Web,”  “A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Phantom Tollbooth”… 

But I’m not just extoling good books.  My point is that good literature is bracing.  Yes, literature can shape a person for good and prepare him for hard times.  Just three examples: 

Reading Antigone’s defiant insistence (against the king’s edict) that her brother be properly buried steels the soul against immoral government.

Can redemption at the end of a wasted life be better expressed than when Sydney Carton, the cynical drunkard in “A Tale of Two Cities,” offers up his life for his rival-in-love with these words: 

“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

And for preparing us to handle well old age, how about the words of old Ulysses as told by Tennyson, reflecting on his diminished strength: 

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield: I couldn’t capture the sound of resilience half as well.