To Raise Resilient Kids, Experts Agree on the Importance of Prioritizing Your Own Resilience

How I leaned into this good news with a bedtime ritual

Source: Canva

“Mom. Mom! Dad brushed our teeth and now it’s time to do roses, thorns, and butts! (giggle) Who’s going to share first tonight?”

I want to groan but I’m also smiling inside. My four-year-old still likes to intentionally say “butts” for “buds.” I let it go. I join my two older daughters in their shared bedroom, wondering what will surface tonight during what has become a powerful ritual for not only reviewing our day but also practicing gratitude and resilience together as a family.

I wouldn’t say I’m a very resilient person but it has not been for lack of trying. Which is probably why I knew even before becoming a parent that resilience was one of the most important traits I wanted for my children. I don’t think I’m alone as evidenced by the search results when I google “parenting resilience books.”

Source: Google

According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. With that definition, it isn’t difficult to understand why resilience is so in-demand.

More recently, in my paid work as a talent management professional for a Fortune 100 company, the World Economic Forum reports that resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility are among skills that have become critically important in the workforce too. It’s become a CEO agenda item — there is a deficit of resilient professionals.

This intrigued me. The global workforce, which I participate in, is requiring increasingly resilient individuals. The world at large, which I’d like to raise my kids to operate independently in and meaningfully contribute to, with all its curve balls will be easier to navigate for resilient kids.

So I decided to get curious about how and whether my own journey to greater resilience might impact my kids’ resilience.

According to the research: A Three-For-One

What I found among the experts was compelling:

• According to verywellfamily.com’s Amy Morin, LCSW: “One of the best ways to teach kids mental strength is to mirror these qualities in your own life.” For example, “Make self-improvement and mental strength a priority in your own life and avoid the ​things mentally strong parents don’t do.”
• Based on her new book, Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine, Michele Borba, Ed. D. shared in a Parenting Masterclass: “Resilient parents raise resilient kids. Kids will learn more from watching you model resilience, rather than hearing you talk about it.” In an interview for the Sunshine Parenting podcast, she adds, “Thrivers is 50,000 ideas [for teaching resilience skills] that are science-backed. But the easiest way to begin is to flip it open and [pick the one] you need. Because if you work on yourself, what you can do is to teach it to your child. The best way for a child to learn is by showing him, not telling him and you have a win-win.”
• In an excerpt from the book Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain World published by The Child Mind Institute, Madeline Levine, Ph.D. writes: “The greater our inner reserves, the more tolerance we’ll have for all the sources of anxiety in our lives and in our children’s lives, and the more effective we’ll be at managing and modeling an approach to life that is dictated by thoughtful choices and not reflexive anxiety.”

Wow. To summarize, what I found is what I’m going to call a Three-for-One. Prioritizing my own resilience is: 1) good for myself, 2) good for my kids, and as a bonus, 3) good for my earning power. I am also an optimizer so you have no idea how galvanizing this triple-win is.

Now onto conquering the “how”.

Growing in resilience: Past efforts and resources

My journey developing my resilience skills started years ago with the book The Resilience Factor — 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles by psychologists Karen Reivch and Andrew Shatte. I really liked the authors’ central idea that “our emotions and behaviors are triggered not by events themselves but by how we interpret those events.” The concepts from the book resonated strongly because it has always been a challenge for me not to interpret an event more dramatically and negatively than someone else with more resilience might. I found an outstanding book summary here containing chapter notes of the 7 major strategies.

Several of the authors’ strategies made very good sense, including:

• Avoid thinking traps, including jumping to conclusions, tunnel vision, and “personalizing”, or the reflex tendency to attribute problems to one’s own doing
• Detect icebergs, or those beliefs that when challenged produce inordinately intense emotional responses, so that you can consider whether these beliefs are getting in your way
• Put something into perspective, or change a belief about a future threat to a level that’s more in proportion with the real degree of threat

Unfortunately, it was one of those books that was a great read, but largely did not stick and create new habits or behaviors.

During other bumpy times, I also tried cognitive behavioral therapy with limited success. Looking back, what I found was that my need for therapy would go away because it was the events or circumstances causing the depressive feelings which changed, versus actual improvement in my ability to handle or process what was going on in my life.

More recently, in her book Rising Strong, author and social researcher Brene Brown made more accessible the strategy of of critically evaluating and then changing the “shitty first draft” that initially runs in your head about an event.

Yes, there are so many good resources out there!

Trying something different this time

So despite all the good resources out there, I still didn’t think I was becoming a more resilient person and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

This January, with three young kids afoot and what felt like the never-ending pandemic, I was desperate for greater agency in my life . Ready to try something else, I felt armed with the conviction that my resilience really, really mattered — after all, prioritizing my own mental toughness and inner reserves would have a big impact on my children too. I decided I wanted to approach it in a way that involved them and settled on the activity of Rose, Thorn, and Bud.

Mindfulschools.org recommends this activity as a way to help kids reflect. The mechanics are not hard. People take turns sharing a rose, which is anything positive. Next is a thorn which is anything negative. Last is a bud, which is something you’re looking forward to. You can do it on whatever regular cadence makes sense to the group.

While I initiated this daily exercise as a way for me to be vulnerable with my daughters about my daily thorns, my two older girls were getting old enough that I also thought it was a good time to introduce a family ritual for daily connection and reflection. As I mentioned, I am an optimizer!

So yes there have been days when my thorns sound like, “Today I had a migraine which was a big bummer.” But here is another thorn I had to share.

Girls, here’s my thorn. Something super ridiculous happened. Mom found out she did something really careless. I got a notice from our bank. I didn’t have enough money! It’s going to cost us hundreds of extra dollars because I wasn’t careful. When I found out, I was so mad at myself. This happened right after lunch. I was so mad. Oh I was so mad. You know what actually. I felt pretty stupid even though I know most things I do everyday aren’t stupid at all. Even now I still feel kind of foolish. But… I calmed down after a while. Eventually. I did XYZ to prevent it from happening again. I’m still kind of upset. But at least I don’t think it will happen again.

Knowing I had to look into the whites of my daughters’ eyes at bedtime was a forcing function for helping me interpret the event differently. I honestly felt not an insignificant amount of shame initially. Which of course is completely the opposite of what I want my children to feel when they make a mistake.

Hope

I’m hopeful I have stumbled onto a strategy with more lasting power to grow my resilience, day by day. In considering all the resources I’ve been fortunate to have had access to, I generally do know what the thinking traps are, what the proper reframing strategies are, what types of “shitty first drafts” about myself to avoid, etc. I have a good idea of how a therapist might counsel me with if I’ve been a funk for a while, or what a good friend might say to me if I’m being unkind to myself. The nightly ritual with my kids provides accountability to sharpen my own skill into a habit, with the warmth of connection.

According to frequent Washington Post parenting columnist contributor Dr. Christine Koh in 7 Strategies for Parents Hitting the Pandemic Wall:

Rituals — purposeful, meaningful practices — are powerful. Years ago, an educator friend shared that one effective way to get a sense of your kids’ daily experience is to play “high/low”: to simply ask for a high and low moment from the day. This ritual helps my family talk about the good and the bad in each day, and often leads to conversations about gratitude, resilience and more.

What I love about this is that clearly the daily high/low (or rose/thorn) exercise can work on several levels. It provides me the opportunity to practice resilience skills on any given day, because that is my intention. But a resilience arc can also form over time without being orchestrated and even young children will see it on their own.

Here’s an example. My oldest daughter’s thorns does often consist of things like having to shower against her will and getting bruises. But one night, something unexpected happened that blew me away. For a while, math as a school subject was a frequent thorn. I heard about about it less when she started gaining more confidence and receiving helpful feedback from her teacher. And then one night, math was her bud, that is, what she was looking forward to the next day at school. “Yeah Mom, math’s kind of fun!” She grinned when I gently reminded her of how many nights I’d heard her complain about math as her thorn.

If you’ve decided that resilience matters

Resilience is hard. Parenting is hard. Exactly zero parents need another to-do unless it’s something that matters to them. It’s the last thing I want to do to suggest that your personal resilience or your child’s resilience is something you should add to your plate if it’s not something you think you should prioritize right now — because every family is different and the timing needs to also be right.

However, if you’ve decided that resilience matters, I hope you’re encouraged that any hard work to implement a strategy or tool for yourself will help your child too. The awesome thing is that a resilience technique for your child is probably something you could also learn, to the benefit of all.