Have you ever felt really, really blue and wondered if you were just sad, or actually depressed? If it is hard for us to tell the difference even in ourselves, how can we tell it in our kids?

One of my favorite books as a child was Anne of Green Gables. I knew I’d found a kindred spirit when the main character, Anne Shirley, proclaimed that she was in the “depths of despair.” I remember thinking, “Finally, here’s a girl who understands me.”

Never mind that Anne Shirley was a red-headed 11-year-old orphan living on Prince Edward Island in the early 1900’s, and I was a little black girl from a small town in Alabama, growing up in the 1980’s.

Anne Shirley was a character prone to theatrics, and if I’m totally honest, I had my share of dramatic moments as a child, but what I identified with was Anne’s sadness–a sadness which was probably a precursor to my first real bout of depression years later during my freshman year of college.

So, when I started to recognize that same sadness in my own daughter, I knew I had to be open to the possibility that it was more than just pre-teen melancholy.

But how can you tell if your child is just sad or truly depressed? And what can you do in each case to help?

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When your children are small, you chose everything for them, from what they will wear to where they go that day.

As parents, we know that someday, they will have to make decisions without us. How do we make sure they know how to make good decisions that keep them safe in an increasingly dangerous world?

The short answer is, you can’t. Not really.

But there is something you can do.

A few years back my oldest daughter was eighteen and sitting in the living room, plinking on our piano. Like a slow-motion replay, I still remember her silhouette as she made her announcement. Head down, looking at the keyboard, she tried for casual; “So, Mom, I’ve decided I want to go into the Army full time.” Arms tight to her side, she braced for argument.

Over an hour later, I had cycled through reasoning, debate, bullying, cajoling and even pleading.  The discussion ended with this exchange;

“Why? WHY do you have to go where people are DYING?”

“It just feels right, mom.”

With those five words, my world-view spun and the pivot point suddenly was NOT me. I realized: this was about my daughter, and HER life.

“Give me time,” was all I could muster.

It took me a week to come around. During that time, I remembered my brother, Doug. Doug made it home from Vietnam safe and sound, but died in a car accident less than two years later.  [Read more…]

You are really good at failing.

No, really. Do you remember the first time you fell off your bike? Failure.

What about that time you got that D on a test? Failure.

Your first kiss? Oh man, big time failure, or maybe that was just me.

See, really good at failing. Except, what makes a person good at failing isn’t the actual failure part, it’s the resiliency that comes after: picking the bike back up, studying harder for that next test, practicing on the pillow at home… oh wait, just me again.

Obviously not everyone is good at failing, but I’m willing to bet that you are. After all, you’re reading a parenting article to become a better parent. I could probably go so far as to say that failing, figuring out how to bounce back and emerging a better person for it are a part of your DNA.

So, here’s the question then: How can you pass this on to your child? How can you teach your child to be good at failure? How can you raise a hardy, resilient child who can face pretty much anything and come out the other end a heck of a lot stronger?

Raising a Resilient Child: The Epiphany

I remember my first experience with it very well. My oldest was two. I was watching her from the park bench and nursing her newborn brother when she fell and scraped her knee. I could see there was no blood, and she wasn’t going to need any first-aid, but I still felt torn as her little eyes welled up with tears.

“Mommy come kiss!” she pleaded.

I didn’t respond. How do you kiss a knee and breastfeed at the same time?

“Mommy kiss!” she repeated.

Necessity is the mother of all invention.

“Can you give it a kiss better?” I asked. That was her first lesson in resiliency.

Her little head cocked to the side as she pondered my question. The tears stopped. In a flash, she had kissed her own knee and was back on the playground as if nothing had happened.

At first, I felt guilty for my inability to be in two places at once, but after thinking about it I started to feel pretty good about myself and the inadvertent resiliency training I was doing. Of course, as I would quickly learn, there’s a lot more to teaching resiliency than simply kissing your own knee.

Here are some of the other things I’ve learnt along the way about raising a resilient child-

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Have you ever noticed your kids reacting to stress in ways similar to yours? Have you taught them how to reduce stress?

For many of us, we resort to acting out our own unique version of the ‘fight or flight’ stress response. We might internally ‘argue’ with what is happening. Or we might shut down and resist dealing with it altogether.

For me, my subconscious response is to force my will upon the situation — not the best way to respond when you are trying to be a positive parent.

My 4-year-old son, who has a flair for delay, one day decided he simply must find his ‘very-special-one-of-a-kind’ blue button. I was trying not to be late to teach yoga class and with everything else that had been going on in my life at that time, I was in no mood to search the house to find a button. So, I put my foot down.

“No, we don’t have time to look for it now. We’ll find it when we get back.” I said.

“But, mommy, I need it!” He said in truth.

“It’s not that important. Come here please.”

“NO!” he yelled and stormed away in a desperate search.

“Get over here right now! I’m going to count! 1….2….”

You can see where this is going. A perfect storm of circumstances culminating in a power struggle of epic proportions. Never underestimate the will of a 4-year-old.

Stress is without a doubt one of the biggest banes of modern life. It lurks silently below the surface and sabotages the best of our intentions when we least expect it.

Luckily, there’s hope for all of us.

Stress is NOT Inevitable

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It was 5 pm on a Sunday when my phone buzzed. I did not recognize the number or the voice. “I’m sitting here beside your son at the bike park. Your husband has had an accident. Paramedics are on their way. He’s not okay.”

I looked around the living room. My infant was asleep, while my toddler and preschooler were playing around me. My 6-yr-old was with his semi-conscious father at a bike park an hour from home. We’d lived in Denver exactly eight weeks.

In that moment, life changed irrevocably for my family.

My husband survived the accident but had life-altering injuries. In the months that followed, I realized our lives were not going to go according to our plan.

Before becoming parents, we dreamed of the kind of childhood we would give our kids. We were certain we would never repeat our parents’ mistakes. We would never lose our temper or forget important days. They would never experience any of the hardships we did. No matter what, we would insulate them from suffering.

Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work that way.

Accidents, illnesses, pandemic, sudden job loss, divorce, financial strain, addictions.

At some point, all of us have to face the fact that our kids don’t get to live the fairy tale childhood we dreamed for them. Instead, many of them must deal with circumstances that are difficult for even adults to navigate.

Not only that, but we now have to learn to parent them through their hard seasons while also walking through the toughest times in our own lives.

When the life we planned for our children falls apart, when things go wrong in horrible, unexpected ways, how do we move forward as parents? How do we help our children move out of a crisis and toward a healthy life?

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