Children Are Not Resilient
How our culture is negatively affecting our children
Despite what you may have been told, children are not naturally resilient. I’m not sure what quack came up with the idea that children are resilient, but it was probably to sell a book or keep someone in therapy longer.
If you ask researchers in the field of psychology they generally define “resilient” to mean that the person is doing better than expected given the situation that they find themselves in. When it comes to children of divorce, this generally means that even though they are not getting their basic needs met, they are not in jail or a clinical problem. Contrast this with the definition of thriving in which during sensitive periods your needs are met, or you have what you need for your well-being.
But I deserve to be happy
When our children are born they are equipped with survival, not social skills. When selfish parents separate and divorce, the child’s survival instincts take over. Divorce may be the “uncoupling” of a husband and a wife and the chance to start fresh with someone new, but for the children, it is a time of uncertainty, instability, and fear. As adults, when faced with the prospect of these, we can resort to decades of life lessons to help us navigate the troubled waters. Your children, unable to draw upon a lifetime of experiences, are therefore ill-equipped to understand what is happening and to return to their previous state, where all of their needs were being met.
Some parents adopt the mantra that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but what parent that cares about the well being of their child is willing to subject their child to trauma and an ordeal that nearly “kills them” in hopes that they become stronger because of it? How did resilience suddenly become the go-to word so that we can have a clear conscience as we try and justify our selfish behavior?
Blame your parents
It is easy to argue that the majority of parents out there did not receive the optimal care they should have and therefore have no recollection of what it should look like. We have a biological predisposition to feel joy by looking after our children. However, if you grew up looking after yourself, you have learned to avoid the care taking of children as you feel no pleasure from this task. Poor parenting snowballs from one generation to the next, and divorce will affect your future generations.
If poor parenting of previous generations loads the gun, our culture of being self-centered pulls the trigger. We are constantly being told that we deserve to be happy and “no regrets” or better yet “Yolo”. We go to great lengths to shape and mold our children to fit into our lifestyle. The so-called experts tell us to avoid spoiling the baby, yet when you break down child development, you see how important it is for us to adjust to the baby’s life and not the other way around. When we allow a baby to cry themselves to exhaustion, we are putting the child at risk for a lifetime of depression and aggressive behavior.
If we are not behaving well as parents are we resilient or are we thriving. A study of adverse childhood experiences found that 2/3 of adults in the United States had adverse experiences as children and that these experiences are still negatively affecting their health and well being. It noted that even with proper intervention, the effects of trauma and neglect had lifelong consequences on a person’s physical as well as mental health. If the United States is a nation suffering from anxiety and depression, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes at epidemic proportions then are we even resilient? And if we are not resilient, how can we say our children are?
Good enough
Instead of continuing the cycle by telling ourselves our children are resilient how about we focus on giving our children an environment where they can thrive? Yes, this will mean we need to change how we parent our children, and yes, this will also mean putting our children’s needs ahead of our selfish wants and desires and working on our relationships with our partners. Granted if your marriage is fraught with addiction, abuse, and serial infidelity, you are probably better off separating for the children’s protection. However, the majority of divorces happen to marriages that are actually “good enough” and it’s the selfish parents that are not willing to let go of their own needs that are causing the most damage.
