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 😂

The issue I have s with your word 'often', as that is wrong.

People who experience childhood difficulties sometimes develop resilience but many people develop addictions, depression, anxiety, emotional problems and have ongoing difficulties. The data is very clear and denying reality because it comforts us to imagine that poverty is not that bad is bordering on cruel really.

'Don't cry about feeling hungry, Freddie, you'll be a really resilient adult as a result, lucky boy!'

Sorry your son has struggled. I’ve found that most teachers are understanding and really kind but the SLT seem to be the issue. Some of the things they’ve said to us are genuinely disgusting. Well trained robots that seem to forget they’re dealing with children. I stand for none of it, but it’s heartbreaking to hear other children’s with issues, with less supportive parents, being treated so badly by these adults that preach kindness and tolerance in assemblies. 😡 3 years left at school and counting.

Yes very complex and you are right we are testing something on them.

I wonder if societal change is happening too fast for us to know what to do?

l think children are missing out on a key developmental stage, of playing outside with a group of children. A lot of resilience, life lessons and social skills were learned that way.
I think from an anthropological view, we need that. It could be from grazing your knee, to a local boy saying something mean. It was part of growing up.

It's creepy now, kids indoctrinated on screens. I think very young children need a single caregiver also. I know that's not affordable for most. But l think it may be fucking them up, being in a crèche with lots of kids.

Unless you want university students crying because a lecturer has asked them to read something they disagree with, then yes, grit and resilience are very important qualities to instill in children.

We need to stop pathologising normal emotions. It's completely normal to be anxious when you do something you've never done before, sad when something sad happens, disappointed when you don't get what you want. I see young adults every day who think they have deep-seated mental health problems when all they actually have are normal emotions, and parents who coddled them until they became weak. You're supposed to make your children strong and resilient so they can cope with life.

Both my children had those things. I was a SAHM from when I had my first child, my youngest is now 14 and I haven’t gone back to work. They played out with other kids from when they were about 6. We’re an outdoorsy family, we moved to suit that lifestyle so not all screen time here. One kid is a ‘worrier‘, one isn’t. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I echo all of this. I think for me it is also important that children learn that feeling emotions is normal, even the uncomfortable ones e.g. sometimes you will be worried/nervous/scared about things, because it's a worrying/nervy/scary time e.g. before taking a driving test or an exam, or moving to a new school

That is perfectly normal response and you need to find a way to work through it and not just say 'I'm anxious, I can't'

There’s no one answer really, a mixture of resilience alongside care of mental health is what most people need imho. I’m trying to currently find the balance with my naturally over anxious dd.

ultimately there’s no magic cure all for any mental health problem and recovery/improvement is largely controlled by the individual. That’s not to say it’s as easy as ‘pull yourself together’ but unless someone buys into their own recovery and is motivated then medical intervention is unlikely to be a sustainable solution. It’s an aid. Resilience then plays an important part.

This is a really interesting thread - lots of very thoughtful posts (in amongst a few less well thought out ones obviously).

I think the short answer is that it's not that simple but that yes, humans do need resilience and coping strategies.

The complex truth involves the fact that one part of being resilient is being able to admit that you're not able to cope with a specific situation alone and knowing how to get help. However the other side of the coin is having the self confidence to try things alone and accept failures, set backs and things not going as planned without that in any way undermining the individual's inner self worth.

In all honesty integral self worth is instilled from (arguably before) birth on a daily basis right through the formative years and where this isn't the core of their family/ domestic/ home experience day on day, month on month, year on year it is very unlikely to be "teachable" via assembly sermon and a 50 minute lesson once per week, or even as part of a cross curricular"initiative".

Any SLT led initiative in schools will tend to be buzz words and lip service to something incompletely understood by at least half the adults running it anyway, sadly.

Children and adults do need resilience and gtit but it comes from an unshakable inner core of self confidence instilled through their homelife starting before they're even consciously self aware - only when that's in progress can children (or anyone) be comfortable that "if at first you don't succeed try, try again" (because its not that you're a worthless failure who can't do it, its just that you didn't manage this specific thing this time, but if you keep trying you might, and even if you don't it's not a reflection on your value as a person, it's limited to your current ability to do on this one very specific thing).

I very much doubt that it is being championed above other traits at all. Having a lesson or class does not mean that it is. Just like having an English class, an RE class, art class, pe class etc means you are championing those skills or attributes above all else, you are simply applying yourself to one thing at a time. It is part of the whole picture and it is OK to focus on a skill, it does not mean that you are not valuing everything else.

This! Children need to experience failing, losing and sadness as well as happiness and success but in an environment where the adults around them can show them coping strategies.

Kids also need strong boundaries and to respect being told 'no' where appropriate.

It'll help them become resilient and capable.

• means - does not mean

I think it’s a bit of a double edged sword- yes the ability to adapt and cope with change is important and seeing adversity as an opportunity for change and not labelling yourself as a failure for having bad things happen is positive. But in the sector I work in there’s a lot of discussion about resilience. How to build it, how to cope with more stress, unreasonable expectations and demands, complaints and pressure. I sort of feel I’d be more resilient if people just stopped metaphorically kicking me in the head so often.

Resilience is a good thing to learn, life will not always be easy and kids need to learn the skills to deal with adversity. Whilst academics and psychiatrists can argue about the finer reasons, this generation struggles emotionally a lot more than previous ones and there's negative outcomes. Dealing with life is important especially coping strategies

Brilliantly put. Couldn't agree more.

Aside from blaming individuals for being, or fostering, snowflakes nobody on here is really addressing WHY we feel we need to deal with this right now.

There has been a huge shift in society over my lifetime. Not just social media and not bad parenting or entitled kids. Our lives are hugely less secure than they used to be. All the basics in our lives like housing, education, work and social care are much, much more precarious than they were.

The precarious nature of our lives now is something to question or get angry about not something to attempt to train out of ourselves with courses or candles.

It's an excellent thing to try and foster if taught properly. Used wrongly it is weaponised and a brilliant stick to beat people with. I don't think mass application leans towards the former. Schools look great for "teaching" it but if a child struggles with something then their supposed "lack of resilience" is a handy catch all label with a solution- work on resilience! Not every school or workplace will delve into what's really causing issues if it can cover them under
a buzz word.

Personally I have a GAD diagnosis. I try to be fairly resilient with a lot of things and there are areas where GAD used to win that I am making headway in and becoming more resilient at through effort on my part (ie, through resilience). Things that are very linked to or really trigger my anxiety? I'm probably not very "resilient" on my own and even with a lot of effort, it may be a long time before I really am. These are areas /occasions which require support - not a kicking.

It's like it's all down to the individual

Bingo! Who else would it be down to?

All things being equal, a person is their own biggest influence on how their life will pan out.

Its down to their attitude, their hard work and how they apply their talents.

We don't all have the same skills and intellect etc, but we can still all apply ourselves to individual achieve the best we can be.

Mental health has been mentioned above - this is obviously not a persons "own fault" any more than a physical illness is. (I say this as someone who had dreadful mental health in my teens). A person can take steps to improve their mental health, but it is a complex situation - for a start, they have to first become aware that they are mentally ill.

I am all for kids learning strategies to get through the inevitable disappointments and difficulties of life. Not all kids see this modeled well at home.

But resilience alone won’t help you out of poverty, or an awful home environment, or climate change. Resilience alone won’t help you overcome racism or misogyny. On a societal level, some people simply have the cards stacked against them. It’s a cop out to put it all down to individual resilience or lack thereof.

Absolutely kids need to develop resilience. It shouldn't have to be taught in schools, it should be coming from parents and home. But it's not.
Look at all the parents on here bending over backwards to ensure their children don't 'miss out' on anything or have to feel disappointed. Or sad. Or Angry. Or any other perfectly normal 'negative' emotion. Never having to understand that, whilst they might be the centre of their parents world, they are not the centre of everybody's. You end up with children who have no idea how to cope when something doesn't go their way or they don't get what they want. Or someone doesn't 'like' them. Perfectly normal but perhaps out of their 'comfort zone situations are avoided. All doing no favours.
Parents jump in and label everything as 'bullying'
Bullying is real, of course, and can have devastating consequences. I, in no way, believe otherwise but way too many anxious, overbearing parents deny their children a life skill by labelling any negative or undesirable interaction with peers as bullying.
Our children take their cues from us but who wants to admit that THEIR own lack of resilience may have negatively impacted their child? It's a hard ask.
Someone has to help those who have no clue how to cope with the normal emotions and situations they've been protected from 🤷‍♀️

We've had several decades of extremely easy living in Britain. That kind of living is not sustainable in the long term, with the reliance on fossil fuels and heavy industry. The nation's mental health and resilience has taken a massive beating as more old fashioned play and pastimes have been replaced by online worlds and unnatural lifestyles. None of us would last 5 minutes in a developing or under developed country. It's time to stop this weird experiment before we turn into the humans in Wall-E.
Playing the blame game does no good for the individual, they just get left behind while their parent whines.
Holding arms up in horror and exclaiming, "what about our mental health!" will be of no use to anyone when the chips are really down.

But is that what they are teaching?? I doubt it, given mental health awareness is at a height.

If they are teaching resilience well, it’s an important skill. We all have to deal with a lot of shit in life and building skills to cope and move forward is really important.

I do think you are being over sensitive and also unrealistic. Awareness of mental health and how to manage and talk about it is important, but to succeed in life you have to get out and do things and learn how to get through failure.

@DickDarstedly I think you raise some interesting points that have crossed my mind in the past.

On many, many levels our lives are much better than at any comparable point in history but with that comes a loss of control and more pressure to fit into increasingly slimmer perimeters .

The basics of survival - shelter, heat, food, water - are beyond the reach of individuals. Even my grandparents could face a cold, poor, winter in the knowledge they could scavenge for firewood, grow their own food, go scrumping or poaching etc. those things aren’t really options for many people anymore whether access to resources or lack of knowledge.

I can’t believe that the knowledge your basic requirements are out of your control doesn’t have an impact on peoples psyches.

But all things are not equal, are they, so you're starting from a flawed premise.

This is a really interesting thread!

Having taught for years, I think problems arise as soon as something that is, at its core, quite a good idea gets given a snappy title ('grit and resilience') and gets turned into a sort of problem-solving product. The purpose gets twisted and becomes something to serve the organisation and not the individual.

Mindfulness is a good example. I've read enough about it to know that, done right, mindfulness techniques are helpful for many people. However, every time I've encountered it at work, it's being suggested as a low-cost sticking plaster to give the appearance of 'doing something' about low staff morale/mental health. When actually, the reasons for the low morale are terrible working conditions, long hours, inadequate pay etc. It stops being about helping the person and more about making that person the problem so that the organisation doesn't have to spend effort (and money) tackling the real problem.

At its core, teaching children strategies to help them cope with life's challenges- and when and how and who to ask for help if the problem isn't something they can deal with alone- is a good idea. I don't think most people develop these skills without being taught them somehow, either by being taught explicitly or seeing adults modelling healthy coping strategies.

I've seen resilience taught brilliantly in one school I worked at. The foundation to it all was to foster a really supportive, inclusive classroom culture where children felt as safe as possible to take risks and try things without the certainty that they could do it perfectly first time. Then lots of work and support done on what to do if it doesn't work out first time, what could I do if I get stuck, how to manage friendship issues etc. And I think it should go hand in hand with caring for children's mental health, because often they will face challenges that they can't deal with alone.

However, I think this needs to be done as part of normal classroom practice, not teaching 'grit and resilience' as a stand-alone topic. I'm not even sure children need to be TOLD they are being taught grit and resilience. Then it just becomes another target they have to try and meet instead of something learnt at their own pace and developed naturally over time. Learn 5x table, master column addition, become gritty and resilient 🤦🏼‍♀️