Kingdom of Rage by Elizabeth Neumann

Author:Elizabeth Neumann [Neumann, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worthy
Published: 2024-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

RESILIENCE AND GRIT

In homeland security, “resilience is the ability to adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruption.”5 The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for administering billions of dollars every year to help the nation be prepared for a bad day. The goal of those investments is to build resilience into our systems and infrastructure so we can quickly bounce back from a disaster—particularly catastrophic disasters. The homeland security community is constantly evaluating our protection, mitigation, response, and recovery plans; exercising those plans; and shoring up any gaps to ensure we are as prepared as possible. One of the best ways we prepare for the catastrophic events is by perfecting our responses to more frequent disasters—tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. We need the practice in responding to smaller disasters and learning how to recover quickly in order to be prepared for the larger ones.

Unfortunately, we might be doing the opposite of this principle in our parenting and for ourselves. In the last decade, educators and parents have become more aware of the dangers of “helicopter parenting.” Overprotecting our children—particularly, saving them from having to solve problems on their own or from experiencing failure—is contributing to their anxiety and depression and stunting their ability to mature into functioning adults.6 Age-appropriate adversity in childhood “provides opportunities to strengthen adaptive skills and self-regulatory capacities.”

It turns out that stress is a good thing in the right doses. Much like lifting weights tears down muscle to build it back stronger, adversity strengthens our resiliency. But increasingly, American culture is about pain avoidance. We seek ways to be comfortable and feel like we’re in control (even if it’s a false sense of control). Any concept of having to endure pain is lost on us. The problem is, our avoidance of adversity—either by quitting when things get hard or distracting ourselves or numbing the pain away—weakens our ability to endure bigger crises.

Studies on resilience in children show that having “at least one stable and committed relationship with an adult”—such as a parent, caregiver or other adult—provided the “personalized responsiveness, scaffolding, and protection that buffer children from developmental disruption.” Likewise, we know adults fair better in stressful situations when they have secure relationships, suggesting that a key part of resiliency is having strong relationships.7 Other factors that contributed to resilience in children included building a sense of self-efficacy and perceived control, and mobilizing sources of faith, hope, and cultural traditions.8

Schools are increasingly emphasizing the importance of resilience and grit—learning how to push through adversity and not giving up.9 They’re creating opportunities for children to try hard things, set small goals, and keep persevering. These opportunities to “fail” and learning how to see “failure” with a growth mindset are a springboard for learning and for growing abilities.10

If you are a parent or educator or otherwise involved with youth, along with being a stable adult in their life who demonstrates unconditional love, one of the best gifts you can give your child is providing age-appropriate opportunities to practice persevering through adversity.

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