One of today’s prominent topics in dealing with students is the desire to create resiliency. Parents and caregivers are continually concerned about how to help children deal with an environment of stress and so many challenges as they strive to be successful. It is a daunting task in the midst of so many issues that are stressful and sometimes traumatic.
Dr. Madeline Levine, PhD. has written a book on this topic entitled: Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain World. Part of the content of this book has been published in a summary article. Here are some quotes from this excerpt.
We reward young scholars for memorizing all the right answers, but in a rapidly evolving world it will be more important to ask incisive questions. Why? Because content is available with the swipe of a finger. What to do with that content, how to evaluate it and stitch it together with other content in new and important ways, is what will matter.
Students are encouraged to compete for awards, trophies and a few slots at top universities, but in the coming years a talent for collaboration will be far more valuable than a habit of ruthless competition. Time and again, I see well-intentioned parents reflexively pushing their children toward metric success, unintentionally crowding out curiosity, creativity and flexibility. These need not be either/or propositions. A healthy balance would serve most kids far better than a singular preoccupation.
We tend to think that every moment, decision, success and failure is critical, but what’s critical over time is that our children become loyal friends, good partners, honest and reliable workers, have a strong moral center and develop other worthy attributes. Our goal as parents is to be courageous enough to give our kids the time and opportunities they need to cultivate these qualities, and to model them ourselves.
Here is the link to the entire excerpt. Dr. Levine discusses the need for parents to be adaptable, tolerant of failure and to make sure that so-called “soft skills” are important for their children to be successful and to have the needed resilience to cope with the varied stressors they face in their schools and communities.
The concepts and principles in this excerpt can be very valuable for parents to know and to attempt to implement. Our parents can use all the help they can get in order to meet the challenges of raising children in our very diverse and complex world of adversity and stress.
Gerry Vassar
President/CEO
