Staff Perspective: “Kids Don’t Come with Handbooks” – Helping Parents Build Resiliency in Their Children

Staff Perspective: “Kids Don’t Come with Handbooks” – Helping Parents Build Resiliency in Their Children

Brian Ludden

At the beginning of my career as a mental health counselor, I worked primarily in school and community-based settings, focusing on the struggles and stressors experienced by military-connected students and their families. The work I did with young people was related to typical school-aged concerns, ranging from the mostly innocuous worries about an upcoming test or the severe struggles with bullying, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and grief and loss. While working in the school system as a Military-Connected Student Support Specialist under a Department of Defense Educational Activities (DoDEA) grant, I had the opportunity to attend the Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC) Annual Conference for several years. This conference was an awesome opportunity to engage with thought leaders whose sole focus was improving the educational and emotional outcomes for military-connected youth. It was at these conferences that I was first introduced to Dr. Ken Ginsburg, MD, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and his ideas about resilience. More on him in a bit.

After some time, I left the school district and moved into a clinical setting as an Intake Clinician in a pediatric setting that specialized in working with behavioral disorders including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder, and more. Much of my work in this clinic was in consultation with parents and caregivers, working to provide clarity about the concerns they were seeing with their children and providing needed diagnoses and recommendations for appropriate interventions and treatment.

I frequently heard from parents that they felt they lacked the skills necessary to support their child’s needs and development and worried that they were ‘screwing up’ their kid. I would do my best in those sessions to assuage their concerns and provide hope for the progress and improvement they were seeking. Oftentimes, I felt a bit like a broken record, saying the same things to family after family: ‘You’re doing your best. Kids don’t come with handbooks on how to raise them as socially well-adjusted human-beings.” I meant every word and still stand by my belief that one of the toughest jobs on earth is being a parent or caregiver to a child.

So, what can we do? How can parents be successful in raising emotionally healthy and happy children, especially in a world where violence, struggle, and strife are experienced by even our youngest children? Dr. Ginsburg suggested that resilience is the key.

In 2016, I attended my first MCEC conference. On the second or third day of the conference, I happened into a talk presented by Dr. Ginsburg where he discussed how, as a physician working at CHOP, he often saw young people in severe states of mental and emotional distress. He stressed that for children and youth to thrive and lead joyful lives, they must develop resilience. Dr. Ginsburg (2020) defined resilience as “the capacity to rise above difficult circumstances, the trait that allows us to exist in this less-than-perfect world while moving forward with optimism and confidence” (p. 26). In his book, Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings (2020) he detailed his approaches for parents and caregivers to “support children in developing the skills that will make them happier and more resilient” (p. 27). He identified seven primary qualities of resilience known as the Seven Crucial C’s:

  • Competence: the ability to handle situations effectively.
  • Confidence: the solid belief in one’s own abilities.
  • Connection: close ties to family, friends, school and community that provide a solid sense of security and strong values.
  • Character: a fundamental sense of right and wrong to help make wise choices, contribute to the world, and become stable adults.
  • Contribution: actions and choices that improve the world, and enhance one’s own competence, character, and sense of connection.
  • Coping: behaviors and thoughts that aid in managing stress and better preparing one to overcome life’s challenges.
  • Control: an understanding of what leads to real-life consequences and informs better decision-making (pp. 42-47).

In conjunction with the 7 Crucial C’s, Dr. Ginsburg emphasized the impact of differing parenting styles on the effectiveness of teaching and promoting resilience in youth. In discussion of the various merits and issues associated with traditional parenting styles, he presented what he described as “lighthouse parenting.” Lighthouse parenting is offered as an alternative to what is commonly referred to as “helicopter parenting.” I am sure we are all quite familiar with what a helicopter parent is, but for the sake of discussion, a helicopter parent is often described as the parent who feels an intense need to hover over and around their child, protecting them from potential strife, failure, and harm. Unfortunately, in doing so, these parents are also preventing their children from learning vital skills through times of adversity, especially resilience. The ability to bounce back from adversity that is attributed to resilience is a tough skill to gain when one is not allowed the opportunity to experience adversity.

Alternatively, lighthouse parents operate as an early warning system, much like the lighthouses that dot the shores of our coastal communities. These towering structures serve to warn ships of danger conditions and circumstances as they approach it but are not capable of lifting from their foundations to intercede when a ship is not course-correcting. Lighthouse parenting operates much the same. As the parent steps into the role of being the lighthouse in their own child’s life, they are tasked with anticipating, identifying, and bringing awareness of danger to their child. However, to support the growth and development of their child, they refrain from swooping in to “save the day” and allow their child to make mistakes, learn beneficial lessons, and capitalize on teachable moments. Bear in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, and in instances of severe danger or imminent risk, it is appropriate to intercede and protect children from undue harm. So, while we would stop our child from running across a crosswalk with cars zooming by, we might hold back when our child attempts to eat a lemon wedge, despite being told they most likely will not like it. The former situation is likely to lead to tragedy without intervention, while the latter situation may help the child to learn why their parents provide warnings related to undesirable experiences. That child may now be more likely to listen to warnings provided by their parents. The decision of whether to intercede is very nuanced and should be looked at from the perspective of positive and negative consequences, with the parent ultimately deciding based on what consequences they are willing to accept, and how those consequences may impact their child.

Have you ever sat down to put a puzzle together with a young child? I’d like you to think back to what that experience was like. Dr. Ginsburg offered the puzzle analogy to describe an ideal approach for teaching a child valuable skills and life lessons. He described a process where you open a puzzle box and dump out the many varied pieces on the table. For a child who has never put a puzzle together, you might start by describing to them the process of finding and assembling the corners and edges before moving on. As this relates to parenting strategies, assisting the child in finding and building the border of the puzzle, you are identifying important boundaries within the parent-child relationship. These boundaries provide discipline and are commonly associated with issues of safety and morality but can also include other important family-specific values. Once the border of the puzzle is assembled, the next step often involves showing the picture of the completed puzzle on the box. You are the picture. This is the example you set as a parent for your child, such as presenting kindness, compassion, and love. Remember, the model or picture you present for your child can be constructive or destructive and is vital to their growth process. Finally, one step remains, which requires only one thing from you as a parent: nothing. The last step is solely the job of your child.

A child attempting to put together a puzzle for the first time might not know that they can separate pieces by color, or shape, or design. So, in their attempt to learn they will experiment and likely fail, a lot. For the helicopter parents that we discussed earlier, this may be a difficult thing to watch. They might feel compelled to jump in and correct the child when they pick up two pieces that obviously do not fit together, or that have colors and shapes that do not match. Watching a child struggle to force unmatched pieces is difficult and can drive us to want to help. But this does not help the child, it robs the child of the opportunity to fail in a safe and structured environment, so they may learn from that failure. Dr. Ginsburg challenges us to remember that if our children are operating within the boundaries that we have set for them, they have a picture of what they are making and can see what the outcome of their efforts should be. We can, and probably should, stand aside and allow them to make mistakes and find pride and joy in their own successes. It may be frustrating, and it may lengthen the time it takes to complete a particular task, but in the long run, our children will have gained knowledge and the skills that will benefit them throughout their lives.

I could go on for pages and pages, but I won’t. I recommend that you get a copy of Dr. Ginsburg’s (2020) book, Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings. Whether you use this book and the ideas within it to improve your own parenting, or to help improve the lives of children and families that you work with in clinical practice, you will not be disappointed.

The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.

Brian Ludden, Ed.D., LMHC, LPC, , is a Military Behavioral Health Counselor at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) within the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

References
Ginsburg, K. R., (2020). Building resilience in children and teens: Giving kids roots and wings
     (4th eds.). American Academy of Pediatrics.