Resilience

This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Malay Wikipedia for the 1st week, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thinking about my teenagers and how they are going to fair when they "launch" is a preoccupation of mine. How will they handle the inevitable emotional, physical, and psychological tests of life?  I recently read an article on the issue but as it relates to whole families.  The Family Stories That Bind Us
describes how Dr. Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University and colleague Robyn Fivush tested their theory that family stories build resilience in children.  They created a series of 20 questions linked to their families and how history, good and bad, got communicated. The result was that the more children knew about family stories the better they did when they had to face difficulties.
 The questions about their families were simple, basic things. From the article, " Examples included: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth?"

Within the group of children that knew their family history, the best results for resilience came from those who told what Duke called, an oscillating family narrative.  The oscillating stories go like this,  "Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family. ”

When I worry about the heartache, cruelty and suffering that is possible in the world and how it might brush up against my sons, what I'm really thinking is "do they have what it takes?"  Have I shared enough to help them understand that the good AND the bad don't last forever? Do they know that their family will be a constant in the midst of whatever success or failure comes their way?  As parents, as people, we need to retell the stories of resilience so that we can repeat history (in a good way). 

Struggling with irrelevance

"Your job is done.  What you can do has already happened."  A coworker was commenting on how once we have teenagers, we have to trust in the foundation that was laid in the previous decade plus.  We have little if any big influence over choices that they will make, how they will think about themselves, or values that they will embrace.  We must simply trust that what has already been done is good enough.  At a time when all of the big boogie men type teen problems are lurking in the shadows, her comment left me in a state of quiet contemplation, laced with anxiety.  Had we done enough?  Do my sons have what it takes to resist the pressures, temptations, and innocent stupidity of their peers?  Is their own character developed enough to push back against cynicism, anger, depression, and general angst?  Will they retain their specialness or just blend in with the lowest common denominator?

Dr. Garland prepares to fall (Photo credit: genvessel)

The bigger questions: have I communicated clearly, how special they are?  Have I lived out my values in a visible and compelling way?  Have I given sufficient tools for problem solving and judgement?  It's like a trust fall.  I'm up on the log at summer camp, dropping down into the outstretched arms of 10 campers.  It would probably only take one or two people in that chain to break ranks and land my tush on the ground.  The big difference in this metaphor is that my children are the ones falling away from me and it is their childhood that stretches out to catch them.  Children Learn What They Live, the poem by Dorothy Law Nolte, that hung in my home as a kid, keeps playing in my mind.

"If a child lives with approval,
He learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship,
He learns to find love in the world."

That's all I want.  I don't have to complicate it.  I want my sons to like themselves and find love in the world. I want them to know that we accept and approve of them.  It's actually so much more than that though. We marvel at all that they are bringing to the world.  My biggest fear about the teenage years ahead is that the unique and marvelous in them will be silenced.  Ultimately, that is why I will never be irrelevant.  All of us parents will always have a job and a purpose.  Sometimes it will be to help sort out poor choices or full on catastrophe.  Sometimes it will be to set boundaries and encourage personal responsibility.  Our constant role though, no matter what happens in their life, no matter whether friends or future partners have their daily attention, is to remind them that they are loved and that they are marvelous. It is our life long job and always relevant.