In all seriousness, watching teens make do in the world today is uplifting and half-sad. They’re dealing with so much more than previous generations, from social pressures online to pressure for good grades. But the one thing that keeps us grasping at hope is this: resilience is not something you’re born with or without. It’s something that can be learned, honed, and built over time, a sort of muscle that grows stronger with practice.
Starting Small (But Starting Somewhere)
The best part about building resilience is that it doesn’t always occur through some elaborate gesture or life-changing experience. Most frequently, it starts with the tiniest little things, like learning to bounce back from a bad grade or navigating through friend drama that’s as big a deal as the apocalypse (but really isn’t. Good luck explaining that to a sixteen-year-old in the moment).
One of the places that children can start to build this resilience is in the things they are doing anyway. Sport is a good example. There’s always this debate over team sports vs individual sports and which one is best for kids, but come on? They’re both fantastic at teaching kids about resilience when they’re knocked off their pedestals. When you’re on a team and lose a key game, you learn how to handle disappointment with people who exactly know what you’re experiencing, and you learn to pull each other through the low times. Individual sports, however, leave students to face their own failure alone, and that’s daunting as well as incredibly empowering. They discover that they can count on themselves during the worst times.
The Messy Middle of Learning to Bounce Back
The truth is, resilience is more about going through the motions and perhaps not necessarily failing than it is anything else. It’s basically a question of learning to sit with the painful feelings for a minute, acknowledging them, and then trying to figure out what comes next. This is probably one of the hardest things for teens to grasp because, when you’re seventeen and your heart breaks or you didn’t make the varsity team, the world feels like it might end.
But maybe that’s exactly where the learning happens. In those moments when everything feels too big and too much, teens start to discover they’re capable of handling more than they thought. It’s sort of like building emotional calluses, if that makes sense. Each difficult experience makes them a little bit tougher for the next one.
Finding Support without Losing Independence
Here’s something that surprises some adults: teens really do want to discover things on their own, but they absolutely need to know there’s aid in the pipeline if they do. It’s a balancing act, to be honest. They’re trying to be independent but still need that safety net, and that is perfectly normal.
Resilience thrives best in settings where adolescents feel safe to fail, feel safe to try again, and feel safe to ask for assistance when they absolutely need it. That could be regular one-on-ones with secure adults (albeit those moments sometimes feel cringe-worthy), or perhaps it’s simply that there is someone who will sit and listen without immediately jumping in to try to solve everything.
Resilience can’t be built overnight; it’s not a quick fix, and it’s certainly not linear. There are going to be some better-than-average days and some losses that are bigger than others. But with time and effort, adolescents can accumulate this great quality of adapting, bouncing back, and even becoming stronger because of adversity.
