Resiliency

When I was in the 4^th grade, I thought I could sing. I couldn’t. I signed up to sing an A-cappella solo in the talent show. My dad said it was a horrible idea. I ignored him. I marched myself onto the stage, stood in front of the entire school (and an extremely large number of parents), and I belted out a painfully off-key rendition of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. It was awful. It was excruciatingly awful. I realized somewhere around the first “doo-dah” that half of the crowd was laughing; the other half was staring at me in abject horror. Think Alfalfa, if you are old enough to understand that reference. I was sweaty, and my hands started to shake, but I stuck it out until the voice-cracking break-screeching end.  For the rest of the day, I endured sad pats on the back from my teachers, and extremely exaggerated reenactments from my peers. It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life.  When I told my parents that I was never going back to school, they didn’t bat an eye. I was going, and I was going to get over it.  My parents had no problem letting me experience failure.

I tumbled quite often, and let me tell you, my parents did not go out of their way to prevent me from experiencing emotional setbacks. When I insisted on singing, they didn’t hire a voice coach, or provide elaborate costumes and background music to detract from my awful singing voice.  They told me I stunk, and they shrugged when I took the stage anyway. My complaints were always met with,  “I’ll bet you’ll never do that again, will ya?” Granted, my Gen-X upbringing could have used a little more empathy and a lot less mocking, but I developed an inner strength that can only be attributed to picking myself up off of the ground. Repeatedly.

As a parent, I understand that it is in our nature to protect and shelter our children. But, at what point is it too much? I see so many of us going out of our way to guarantee that our children are always successful.  We refuse to let them experience failure, endure hurt feelings, or struggle to solve a problem. Some of us will even fight for our children to receive that award, even when we know they haven’t earned it; we just can’t bear to see them sad. After all, they are just babies, right?  Seeing our children struggle is hard, but let’s face it. Real life is a struggle. I wonder how well I could have handled some of the emotional setbacks I have experienced as an adult, if I had not learned to pick myself up as a kid.  I have friends who work in the mental health department of a local college, and they will tell you that there is an entire generation of kids incapable of handling any sort of stress or conflict. The byproduct of an over sheltered child is an adult who crumbles.

Everyone knows that hitting the ground as a child is much easier than hitting it as an adult. Maybe we shouldn’t prevent them from taking those tumbles? Guide them through failures with empathy and love. Don’t let them grow up to believe that the entire world will revolve around them. It won’t, and it is devastating for them to learn later in life. Give them the gift of emotional strength. But listen, if your kid can’t sing, don’t let her climb up on stage to do it anyway. It isn’t funny. Stuff like that can really mess a person up.