Is grit and resilience really the answer?

[Grittymadness]

The DC's school has been doing lots and lots of work on the importance of having emotional grit and resilience. Growth mindset and determination to achieve.

There seems such a focus on this in schools and I have a problem with it I'm struggling to articulate. It's like it's all down to the individual - if your not achieving or coping you just need to toughen up, work harder etc. (This is hard to process when say your child has learning difficulties, poor mental health etc).

Does anyone else agree, or am I just being overly sensitive and need a bit of resilience myself 😂

I think it’s not about toughening up - or if it is they’re teaching it wrong! The way it was taught in my DC’s school was that it’s OK to find things hard, that that’s where you grow - you don’t fail if you find something difficult, you just look for strategies to overcome your particular problem. Everyone finds something difficult, we are all going to struggle sometimes.

It’s anti-perfectionism, and it’s really helpful to challenge low self-esteem.

It’s not the answer but having it will help you

If they're teaching it well, it will be a GOOD thing.

it's the IF that's a bit concerning as conveyed badly it could be disastrous.

Kids do need to build resilience, though. It's surprising how many crumble over friendships, fallouts and unrealistic expectations. Emotional resilience isn't about "grit" or "toughening up", it's about knowing how to cope when things go wrong, including when and how to ask for help.

Learning how to cope is a good thing.

And growth mindset is hugely important. It means that DC will always be seen as capable of change (not limited by expectations that crept in from ast performance)

Try the book "Peak" by Ericsson and Pool to find out more about the key underpinning concepts

Thanks for the replies they are really useful. I guess it feels like if your not coping (say you have poor mental health) it's your fault. You need to build up your resilience and keep trying and overcome it. If yo can't do that it's because you are weak and stopped trying.
Oh dear I'm not explaining myself well 😆

Agree OP. It's a balance, and a difficult one to get right, between 'keep trying, you can do anything!' and acknowledging structural inequalities which are out of their control and which will keep them down.

Whenever some new theory is imported into education, it invariably locates success within the individual, whether it be the pupil or teacher, and conveniently ignores structural and systemic aspects of educational attainment. Which is why governments love this egregious shite.

I turned up just these two by writing debunked next to the relevant topic.

hechingerreport.org/research-scholars-to-air-problems-with-using-grit-at-school/

learningspy.co.uk/psychology/growth-mindset-bollocks/

Brain Gym, Learning Styles, and almost anything espoused by John Hattie spring ot mind.

Emotional resilience is borne out of knowing you can go out of your comfort zone and still be ok. So pushing yourself in a safe environment, in times of calm, gives you the emotional bandwidth to be able to manage when things get tough. It's like building your emotional muscles at the gym so that when the time comes, you have the emotional power to deal with stuff that's more difficult. True resilience doesn't come from trauma it comes from making yourself feel just a bit uncomfortable on a regular basis when you're not in a state of stress. So going to new places, trying new things, going out of your comfort zone a little bit, on a regular basis - all of that is what builds the capacity to cope. If they're teaching it like that, then great. If they're running a mini platoon-style boot camp you might have a problem. Is there any way of finding out?

www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en

I found this very interesting but of course, as with everything you'll find differing views.

Maybe this is a reaction to Covid-19 and all the lockdowns.
Children missed out so much on the social aspects of school life. And now things are black to normal they find it difficult to adjust or have never learnt how to learn in a busy school environment. This obviously leads to stress and poor mental health.

Schools trying to teach resilience would be a way of acknowledgement of the issues caused. It also gives a message of, it's ok to struggle, but here are some tools to cope with it.

At my school, we teach strategies for overcoming normal childhood issues, such as getting a maths question wrong is ok, we are learning. Then gathering the mental resilience to have another go at and trying to solve it, rather than giving up. Or what to do when you fall out with a friend.

Children, in general, are becoming much less resilient. It could be a symptom of lockdown, but it was definitely present in the classroom before. We are so gentle with them and their feelings (which of course, we should be) but the result is that many of them are very unused to feeling any kind of discomfort. They don’t even learn to wait to have a drink of water or to go to the toilet; every need is met immediately, all of the time. Parents get involved in all of their friendship dramas for them, organise their social life, take them everywhere, do their homework for them, etc. They don’t have many natural opportunities to independently work through feeling uncomfortable, sad or disappointed. Therefore, we now actively teach these coping strategies.

Having worked in MH for years and years, it is obvious that those that are struggling and don't appear 'resilient' are the people with trauma, neglect or otherwise difficult upbringings where they were not shown how to be resilient. Instead maybe they were punished, put down, criticised, made to feel vulnerable or unable to cope

There are different ways this teaching can go -

1. (Good) Let's teach resilience in schools because it may not be being encouraged at home, and those that need it most are likely to experiencing counter coping mechanisms at home.

1. (Bad - adding to the person's problems) - Child/adult problem behaviour, not coping etc... Told - "You are not resilient. You need to toughen up. Look everyone else is coping" (hidden message received by person - "I'm shit and everyone else is fine and coping better than me, everyone else is more resilient)

1. (Bad) - Bullies get away with bullying by saying - you need to toughen up/are not resilient.

Psychologist Alex Haslam says something like repeated research shows that resilience is something that happens in groups rather than in individuals. Sure we can have some control over this ourselves, but if we are growing up in a place where we are experiencing poverty, abuse, racism or any of those other similar things that take away our mental energy we have less bandwidth to focus on school or work or whatever else it is. This isn't a failure within ourselves, it's a failure of society and the environment in which we are living, and I think any type of positive psychology has the potential to make people feel worse because they are not able to achieve something that they are told is within their power.

Childhood so-called resilience can have a detrimental effect further down the line, which has absolutely been my experience, you individualise everything and carry on "coping" with more and more stress, and appear to be "resilient" and then all of a sudden 30, 40 or 50 years later you find your body is no longer able to cope and you have chronic or acute illness. There are well known links between adverse child experiences and later ill-health.

It's giving the tools to cope with difficult situations and I think that's really needed with half of todays kids shouting depression and anxiety at every turn .

I feel similar about the concepts OP.
These terms are heard a lot in the NHS recently, I’ve come across it in nursing education and “staff wellbeing”.
In the NHS the problem isn’t staff not being resilient, it’s short staffing, low pay, exploitation of good will and professional responsibility, a permanent short staffing situation initially created by overpaid external consultants and their “skill mixing” ideas (ie fewer degree qualified professionals and more delegation), to the point where there’s not enough staff to train and support new staff properly, with added demands of a pandemic which government hadn’t prepared for adequately. We don’t need more resilience, we need a government that cares.
Sorry quite a tangent from education but yes let’s distinguish resilience from acceptance of exploitation that needs fighting.
Its like a modern “Turn the other cheek” , not good advice in situations where actually you need to punch back, run or shout for help.

Grit and resilience is essential imo. It's how animals survive. That dosn't mean kids should put up with abuse or be a high flier if they don't want to.

It does mean that when life throws hard things at you ( and it will) you pick yourself up and plough on. In my case, i use humour and determination

I am not a high flier but when mum died i could have sunk into despair but i decided to retrain. I wasn't always like this...i had depression, anxiety a d Ed in my teens.

If you want to succeed in your chosen career grit and resilience means oloughing on if you don't get that job, working hard if you want to pass exams and making sacrifices.

Having said all that, Resilience is absolutely right about being short staffed. I work for the NHS and in order to maintain said career without burning out we need more on the ground.

Being resilient should not be an excuse for government underfunding.

Ploughing*

It's not blaming children for not being able to cope, it's about giving them better tools to be able to deal in healthier and more effective ways with the inevitable struggles and challenges that everyone faces!
I think you just haven't had it explained to you very well OP, or you have your own particular prejudice against the idea which is influencing your interpretation.

@malificent7
Perfectly put!

'Resilience' is being misused by twats to mean 'ploughing on with no upset ever'. What it really means is 'regrouping and starting again after a setback'.

Look up toxic positivity. It is everywhere.

As for kids 'saying they are' anxious and depressed - they ARE anxious and depressed. Life for many of them is scary and upsetting.

The school is doing the wrong thing, but good luck changing their mind.

It's an interesting one.

I see growth mindset done badly a lot.

People get the idea that it means a child can do/achieve anything if they work hard enough. This can lead to unrealistic career ambitions, despondency at repeated failure. The point is if you work hard you should improve. This is not a magic bullet, not everyone has the capacity to achieve an A* in maths. If a child in school is trying really hard & failing repeatedly, the work they are being given is not appropriate. It's about teaching people you can always get better at something, even a tiny bit.

Resilience is important in terms of learning to cope with mistakes, take risks, look for solutions rather than wallow when things aren't going well.

I think the current "mental health crisis" is in some walks of life the result of the medicalisation of normal emotional response. If you earn a pittance in a zero hours job, are facing rising costs and can't afford to heat your home, of course you are going to get bloody depressed. Resilience doesn't mean learning to accept a crap life. It means having the wherewithal to look for solutions when things go wrong. Initially it might mean leaving a bad job to seek better pay/working conditions. In an economic climate where there's no alternative it might mean protesting, joining political parties to work to bring about change, training and upskilling.

I think it is essential. At work I can see the difference in people who have an inner 'resilience' versus those who don't. Those who have know that they can have influence on a situation (that doesn't mean they don't find things hard, or have to work at things) and those who don't feel like stuff happens to them. We aren't in a short staffed or difficult environment, the job is really quite cushty but obviously comes with basic job stresses like (realistic) deadlines and feedback.

Children 'these days' (I hate that term but it does apply here) have so little opportunity for risk taking. They are, in general, hand held throgh every step of their childhood. From the playgrounds they visit to how they spend their free time they are protected from risk. As a result they don't have an opportunity to work out challenges. So many studies have been done showing this is detrimental. It's essential a child is given a controlled risk scenario so they can build that inner resilience - I CAN have impact, I CAN succeed on the back of my own work, I CAN overcome through my own choices. And if this time I don't, I will try again differently next time.
By protecting our children so closely we keep them safe, but we also give them a fear of failure and an obsession with perfectionism. I've seen it time and time again with children who won't even engage with a task because 'they can't do it'. Teaching them resilience is about saying it's always better to have a go, you've got the ability, you just need to be brave.
Regarding mental health, some of the bravest and most resilient people I know are those with mental health battles. It would be easy for them to accept their lot in life, but instead they choose to be resilient and brave - by asking for help, by doing things that challenge them which may be small to us but are huge to them. Resilience isn't a specific act but a way of approaching the world and it can only come from within. Teaching children resilience at a young age is essential so if they do end up suffering with mental or physical health later in life they've been given the tools to help them fight rather than just accepting.

I’m more concerned about socioeconomic and environmental issues, and no, more grit and resilience is not the answer to being born poor with no family support in a Britain which increasingly looks like one of Dickens’ novels. Especially when it’s preached by teachers who are generally - generally - from comfortable backgrounds with that support.

But it’s the only answer this country has, while it spends millions on the funeral of a remarkably privileged woman who lived a full life.