To really dislike the phrase ‘kids are resilient’ and wish people wouldn’t say it?

[GoldenGeishaGirl]

Children are not more resilient than adults. Many adults are damaged by things that have happened to them in childhood.

My ex has had such a terrible influence on our children’s lives (too much to get into but I’ll summarise by saying he has no interest in them and zero interest in being a parent) and when he lets them down time and time again, well meaning people say this to try and make me feel better.

But it’s nonsense and it doesn’t make me feel better. He’s causing emotional damage that they probably won’t really understand, recognise or heal from until they’re adults.

Now that they’re young teenagers, I can see they’re gradually realising what a waste of effort he is, and I don’t think it’ll be long before they decide to have nothing more to do with him. I can’t bloody wait.

Too. Fucking. Right.

Excuse my swearing but by God's tears the heavy stuff that happens in childhood can stay with you forever. Sometimes some of it can be healed, but some things really can't.

People usually say 'children are resilient' because it makes them feel better, and they can close their eyes ime.

I have no time at all for that phrase any more (it shows, right?)

Kids are resilient, but trauma is trauma. Resilience isn't enough to get through/get past trauma.

YANBU to want people to stop saying it about your DCs situation, but kindly, UAB a little bit U, to say there's no truth to kids being resilient at all.

The hardest thing is watching my kids in a similar situation to yours, but still primary age, slowly seeing them being affected. They both have medical issue on top of a shite dad. They aren't resilient, the damage is clear and there is no way for me to protect them completely. It is heartbreaking and it is not the childhood I wished for my children.
I understand people say it to be reassuring, but until you watch your kids deal with stuff... you don't understand how bad it is for them.

Why stay with the shi* dad then

YANBU
It was one of the first things explained to us in our Play therapy course. They adapt because they have no option but difficult experiences that happen in early childhood, including and sometimes especially when pre-verbal, is much more difficult to process and heal from.

Who said she did stay with him?

its something learned rather than prebuilt

What a weird assumption...
Haven't been with him for 2 years, been through the Family Court to do everything i can to protect my kids.
Sometimes it's useful to read a post slowly rather then jumping to ideas, because I clearly said I was in an similar situation to OP who clearly isn't with the shit dad either.

Good for you 🌹

My exH said this when he left our family.
We had 4 grown up kids 16+ and a just turned 7 yr old.
All our kids have been deeply affected.
The just 7 yr old ( now in her 20s) struggled with low self esteem for years and is now in therapy.
It's something that cheats say to excuse their behaviour.

Yes, it's very dismissive I think and shows a real lack of understanding.

I think that it’s true that children just need once stable safe parent to be able to cope with one of them being awful. That they’re almost at the point of not bothering with him shows me that you’ve helped them to develop self esteem and self respect and boundaries which is also brilliant (and could be what friends are talking about when they say resilience!)

what your friends (and me!) do not want to happen is for you to waste your motherhood ruminatimg
on what a shite dad he is to the point when it impacts on how present and playful and nurturing a mum you can be, as that would be a shame for your kids and you too’

Absolutely spot on OP.
Kids are no more resilient than adults. They just know they can't tell adults how they feel.
Trauma fucks kids up to adulthood.

I cannot bear it when people say this. Almost always people who have had two loving stable parents and nothing terrible happened in their childhood.

I feel like the ‘kids are resilient’ is supposed to apply to injuries, like if they fall down or something

its not supposed to apply to actual trauma!

yanbu at all

Kids are resilient.

That doesn't mean they are robots unaffected by traumatic stuff.

That's not what the phrase means.

Yanbu. My dad died suddenly in my early teens, I masked my pain for a long time as I didn't want to upset my mum further, she once said I was the strong one. I was to scared to ask for help.

I never grieved for him until well into my 20s when I met my partner, and as a result of the trauma I suffered from severe anxiety for much of my 20s. After lots of therapy my mental health is a lot better but it took a long time.

Not one person on this planet is “naturally resilient” there are so many interdependent factors.
I do believe that resilience can be encouraged and nurtured - the 4 building blocks of resilience are key.
It bugs me so so much when people especially said this during Covid about kids. Dandelion children etc . It downplays the support kids needing and what looked like “ coping” was far from it.
So so many factors play into this including how nurtured and supported their parents were to overcome adversity in their own childhood!!

Sorry op i meant to add, for your family situation the term the power of one is so important here, having at least one stable, emotional connected and supportive adult in a child’s life( you) will go a longggg way in helping your kids overcome any adversity felt / experienced by the absence parent. Xx

I agree with you and am always suspicious of adults who say this (and it is often parents who say it).

Adults can be resilient. Children are not because they do not yet have the life experience or self-knowledge. As a PP said, events that happen in childhood can stay with you for life and literally change who you become. This does not happen once our personalities are fully formed in adulthood.

It’s such an ignorant and dismissive statement. I suspect it’s often used by adults to pander to themselves at the expense of their children. It must be wilful ignorance because - even if you dont read one single book on the matter - we’ve all been children ourselves.

Yep, when someone says “children are resilient” what they actually mean is “I know nothing about children or how they develop” and I then ignore whatever drivel that person goes on to say.

100% agree. It's something adults say, sometimes when they know they've hurt children.

Anyone who is interested in healing from childhood trauma, the book 'The boy who was raised as a dog' is absolutely amazing and full of hope.

It is a phrase I've only ever heard utter fuckwits use.

My best friend's husband used it when he cheated on her and abandoned the family, starting a new one almost instantly. More gallingly he said it when his eldest dd was in hospital for self harm (he had just had a new baby daughter and had stopped contact with his other dc to 'concentrate' on the new shiny one).

My cousin used it to justify the string of deadbeats she dragged into her dc's life. It was an easy way to cop out of thinking through the effect it was having on them to call a new man 'dad' every two to three years, only to inevitably never see them again.

Children are not resilient, they are absorbant. All those big emotions and bad feelings sink right to their core when adults put themselves and their 'happiness' first.

YANBU. The reality is that children are incredibly vulnerable and the more adversity and disruption they experience in their early years, the more likely they are to develop significant life-long social, emotional and psychological problems. There is a wealth of research that confirms this.

Agree.

I'm from my mum's second marriage - my older half siblings were from her first very abusive marriage.

What these two traumatised children didn't need was two toddlers distracting their parents from their teen years. What us two toddlers didn't need was two teens distracting from our very different needs. And none of us needed a mum who was still very buried in her own trauma.

Yes, we all survived, but that's not evidence of a happy childhood full of mature decision-making by the grown ups.