Why Resiliency Matters...

When I do trainings for parents, educators, or youth service providers, one of the things I often share is how parenting has shifted over the generations. Previous generations of parents did everything they could to minimize risk and uncertainty in the lives of their children. But what our generation of parents (me included) often do, to our children’s detriment, is everything we can to eliminate risk and uncertainty altogether.

I remember the summer after my 7th grade year, two of my friends and I made plans to spend the entire day at the Ohio State Fair. Our parents all agreed to it. Each of us was given twenty dollars, which was enough to ride the public bus across town, pay the $5 entry fee, and still have enough for food and snacks throughout the day. The fair opened at 9:00 a.m. and closed at 9:00 p.m. That was our plan. Twelve hours. No adult supervision. No cell phones. No GPS tracking. No cash apps. Just us.

We met up that morning and caught the first bus downtown. From there, we transferred to another bus that dropped us off at the fairgrounds. We handed over our $5 to get in and each still had fifteen bucks in our pockets. Since rides were free back then, once we were inside, our remaining money was just for food.

But before we could make it to the Midway where all the rides were, we had to pass through the game section.

You know the games: ring toss, dart the balloon, basketball shots with a rim barely wider than the ball...all rigged just enough to keep you playing but also to keep you from easily winning. That’s how they get you. And they got us. Bad. Within the first hour, all three of us had blown all our money on games…and none of us had won a single thing.

No stuffed animals. No posters. No goldfish in a bag. Nothing. It was barely 10:00 a.m. We had eleven more hours ahead of us…and not a dime to our names.

But here’s the beautiful thing about that day, we figured it out.

We weren't hungry yet, so we just headed to the Midway and started riding all the rides. Then we made one of the most important discoveries of our adolescent lives, free samples!

That summer, Kudos snack bars had just hit grocery store shelves, and they were doing a massive promotional campaign at the fair. There were stations all over handing out free samples. We ate Kudos bars for lunch. Kudos bars for snacks. Kudos bars for dinner. And we washed it all down with water from the drinking fountains.

When 9:00 p.m. rolled around, we met my friend's mom at the designated pick-up spot, just like we planned. We never told our parents how we’d blown our money in the first hour or survived the entire day on free snack samples and water. That was our secret. But we had the time of our lives. No prizes to show for it, just memories and bellies full of Kudo bars.

Looking back, that day was a reminder of something we forget in today’s world of constant monitoring and instant rescues. Kids have a tendency to figure stuff out, if you give them a chance to. But for some parents, me included, we often want to fix everything, never let our kids want for anything, and protect them from all harm. But as a result, they often don’t have the chance to develop healthy resiliency, coping, and problem solving skills. I’m not saying we throw our children to the wolves and hope for the best. But sometimes you need to let them struggle and give them a chance to find a way through it.

I know there are real threats for many young people in this world. But one of the best things we can do is equip them with the skills, tools, and resources to weather the storms instead of trying to stop the storms from ever happening in the first place.

Check out this free resource you can use to create a plan that will help you weather the storms of life. Now I promise, when you read it you're going to start thinking of all the other people you know that would benefit from this. But before you give it to them, give it to yourself. Learn to live it before you give it.

FTMO - Accept, Adjust, Accelerate (2).pdf

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And here's a real short video I made about the importance of resiliency.

As always, if you like this, please share it with other people you care about.