Resilience

I wrote this blog over a month ago. It keeps changing. It started out being about bullying, but has evolved as I've had some experiences the past several weeks.

There has been a lot in the media about bullying and I've had some people I care about treated horribly lately. While I believe that we need to teach kids to be kind to each other, I also think we need to do better at teaching kids to be resilient. Mean people are not going away, we need to learn/teach how to deal with difficult situations/people without letting it devastate us.

I have a good friend who is a therapist and does a lot of work with foster children/families. She has spent years doing research to come up with a resilience program for families. She has asked us to be part of one of her focus groups. It is a six months program and we are just starting month two. I'm loving it so far.

Each month focuses on different aspect of resilience. Last month was gratitude, which basically was learning how to see something positive in everything. This month we are learning to be growth-minded, meaning learning to see difficult situations as learning opportunities. This includes learning to notice things like saying, "I can't" when things are hard, or blaming others when something goes wrong, both examples of being frozen-minded. One of my biggest pet peeves is when my kids say, "I can't." I've tried to teach them that they can do anything, it may be hard, but that doesn't mean that can't do it. I don't know that it has sunk in.

We also discussed this month how, as parents, we can disable our kids by how we praise them. If we tell them they did well on a test because they are smart, when they don't do well on the next test they think they are not smart, or they may not want to do something hard thinking they have no control over how smart they are, and therefore, how well they'll perform. If, instead of praising ability, we praise effort (i.e. "I'm proud how hard you studied to get a good grade") then they internalize that working hard pays off. I may not have explained that very well, and I'll understand it better as we go through our weekly lessons this month.

Originally, I was excited about this program for my kids. After the first meeting, I realized that I need the information for myself as well. Staying positive and learning to be happy regardless of your circumstances is a lifelong process. I'm excited for my family to learn and participate in my friend's research. I'm ready to make some personal changes and excited for my kids to gain more knowledge that will help them develop resilience to cope with whatever life throws at them.