I now have the privilege of looking back at several
generations, as well remembering at least two generations before me. In a recent reflection upon the differences
between the generations I have observed and interacted with, one thing leapt to
the forefront of differences; and no, it isn’t music.
The difference which I observed is “coping skills,” the
ability to manage or handle the adversity that life places at our door step
every day. I think of my wife’s
grandmother who lived through two world wars and I mean lived through
them. She didn’t live here in the USA
where individuals endured the wars; she lived in Germany, along the French
border in the heart of the wars. I have
seen the pictures of the flattened city from which she evacuated and know of the
hardship of rebuilding life many times over.
I mention this not to minimize the struggles we all go through, but to highlight
what forged the strength in the person I knew as “Kätche-Oma.” These experiences taught her how to cope and
were passed down to her grandchild (my wife); a gentle, compassionate and
loving woman, qualities which should never be mistaken for weakness, as anyone
who truly knows her can attest too, but if ever there was a person who believes
“what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” she would be that person. The lessons handed down to her by her Oma did
not and have not diminished in any way all that is best in her. In fact, they have enhanced what is best in
her.
One does not need to live through the horrors of war, or its
aftermath, to develop coping skills, but one must be allowed to struggle in
small ways to develop the coping skills needed to appropriately manage the
larger things in life.
For children today, this means rejecting the foolishness of establishing
“self-esteem” as a number one priority in their lives. I know far too many individuals who have been
filled with enough self-esteem to fill an ocean, who then reach the adult world,
which refuses to pamper their self-indulgent ego, and they fall apart as they
begin to understand for the first time they are not the best and brightest just
by being present. The outcome is devastating
as they struggle to cope, an experience they should have tasted as a child so
they could manage as an adult.
There are many ways in which you can provide your children
with experiences that will teach them coping skills. Let them play games that have clear winners
and losers. Managing the frustration or
even hurt of losing is a valuable lesson for adult life. Let them feel the failure of poor performance
(hold them accountable). Let them
struggle at a chore or job around the home that you know they are not good at
so they can learn that not all things in life come easy or are done for us, sometimes
we have to do things we don’t like. When
possible, let them have a pet so they can learn to care for another living
being and eventually experience the loss of that being through death. Let them make age appropriate decisions that
may have minor negative consequences (nothing that will permanently scare or
damage the individual) so they can understand that choices have
consequences. We are free to choose, but
we are not free to select the consequences/outcomes of those choices, something
every child should understand by the time he/she is a teenager. I am certain you can think of many other ways
to teach children coping skills and I would encourage you to give conscious
thought to it from now on.
