I’m glad it worked out well for you but not every child has the same reaction. And there are much kinder ways for children to build up their confidence than to endure something that - in your own words - makes them unable to sleep, cry, sweat, and stammer.
We can do so much better than this as parents now, although certainly back in the day this kind of attitude was seen as the only acceptable option.
As I said earlier, it’s important to understand what’s at the heart of the issue. Once you figure out exactly what it is that’s the problem, you can help your child overcome it in a gradual and supportive way.
I have two SEN DC, both high needs and probably won’t ever live independently. God knows I have heard the bloody word “resilience” chucked at me so many times over the years. What people usually mean when they say resilience is teaching your child to comply quietly and not communicate how they’re feeling, just in case it’s inconvenient.
I mentioned this briefly on the previous page but DS started to refuse school. I used to have to pin him down to get him dressed every morning and then take him into school while he was physically screaming and kicking. I was told I “had to be firm” with him to “build resilience”. He was about 5-6 yrs old at the time. My biggest regret to this day is that I didn’t listen to my instincts sooner. He was non-verbal at the time so couldn’t tell me what was going on.
When I realised that it wasn’t building bloody resilience I got him into a different setting. The school refusing went away and life got better but the damage was done. He was scarred by that experience and even now at 16 yrs old, he gets anxious if I’m out of his sight. Given his learning disability, he was always going to be dependent but there’s a degree of anxiety there that’s been caused by what happened during those formative years.
I appreciate my example may be more extreme but we know better now than to make children learn through fear. Encouraging them to gently stretch their comfort zones and supporting them to do that isn’t the same thing at all. And more important than all of that is showing a child that you’ll listen if they’re telling you that they’re not comfortable with a situation.
You’re obviously happy with how it’s worked out for you, and all credit. However you’ve mentioned 30 years of “terrifying” public speaking challenges that you only persevered with “not because you wanted to” but because you were taught you had to. I’m not sure I’d want that for my child - even if they were capable. Feeling that you had to regularly push through something deeply unpleasant doesn’t sound like much fun, and there are plenty of alternatives. That’s not about persistence, that’s about social conditioning - you were taught that your feelings didn’t matter. I don’t think that’s resilience and it’s certainly not something I’d ever advocate for.