Recently, I was talking with a counselor who works with young adults. One of the concerns many, including this counselor, share is the increasing lack of resiliency they are seeing in children, teens and young adults.
Resiliency is the ability to recover quickly when one encounters tough times or something bad happens. It allows the person to “rise from the ashes” and move on with their lives. People who lack resiliency are often those who seem to get stuck when they encounter an obstacle or life doesn’t go the way they had hoped. In fact, a lack of resiliency can even lead to self-destructive behaviors, including suicide.
Unfortunately, helicopter parenting or its mirror twin detached parenting don’t provide ways for young people to learn how to be resilient. Helicopter parents prevent anything from happening to their children that is even unpleasant. They don’t give their kids the chance to learn that they can indeed bounce back from unfortunate events. Detached parents barely notice their kids are encountering tough times and surely don’t provide guidance on how to bounce back from them.
The ironic thing about all of the articles on resiliency is that if we have been teaching our children about God and who He is, they will already have the tools for resiliency at their fingertips. So what are some of the tools of real godly resiliency? Here are a few of my favorites:
Schools don’t start here for another month or so, but school supply areas are already filled in box retailers. school supplies now cost pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost the rest of the year. You can buy a lot of supplies for not much money at all if you watch the special sales that they often add to the already lower prices. Then bring the supplies home and have some fun in these last hot days of summer using them to teach your kids about God.
Summer often brings reading lists for kids and teens. Sometimes, they are given specific books to read, but often there is a lot of freedom. Wouldn’t it be great if some of that extra reading time could be spent reading books that will encourage your children to live godly lives? There are actually quite a few good Christian/positive secular books for kids and teens on the market.
Have you ever really thought about how children are taught about the death of Jesus? When they are young, the story is sanitized quite a bit. Even if the beatings and other horrific aspects are mentioned, they are told in story form. A child who has never been exposed to the things in the story will have little understanding of what really happened.