I think we’ve all been there: the big family gathering filled with aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins that you haven’t seen in ages, everyone laughing and catching up, the sounds of kids shrieking with playful laughter competing with the happy sound of adults catching up after far too long apart.

If your family is anything like mine, these events are littered with hugs, kisses, and kids roughhousing with each other all over the place.

It’s very happy chaos.

As an adult, I always look forward to the opportunity to connect with my relatives, see how all of the little ones have grown and changed, and relax around my support network.

However, as a child… I often dreaded these types of events.

There was always one uncle who insisted on giving me a kiss, even if I tried to wiggle away from his scratchy beard, an aunt who hugged me a little too long and too tightly for comfort, or a cousin who played a little too rough, even when I didn’t want him to.

And my parents always kept encouraging me to go give another hug or kiss to a relative I didn’t remember or particularly want to be physically close to.

What I learned when my parents made me tolerate unwanted hugs and kisses and told me that Cousin Johnny was being rough “because that’s what boys do” and I had to ”learn to deal with it” and what I later struggled with as an adult was that my “No” — my lack of consent — didn’t matter.

My parents unintentionally taught me to internalize the belief that what I wanted or didn’t want to happen to my body was not as important as the wants of those around me.

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Looking into the face of your newborn is one of the most mesmerizing experiences a parent can have, even when it’s number two, three or four.

There’s nothing that surpasses it! Unless it’s watching them walk up to receive their diploma 18 years later.

The fear of every parent when a new baby comes into their lives is that they won’t measure up to the challenge or be able to provide the kind of life that develops kids capable of being strong, competent adults. How well I remember, even though those years were long ago, and I now watch grandchildren move into the adult world.

Looking back and reflecting on qualities that truly make a difference, I feel there are some that stand out as essential. One of those is RESILIENCE – defined in Raising Resilient Children by Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein as the ability to have inner strength to deal competently and successfully with challenges and demands. It is a quality every parent hopes his or her child develops; however, it is one that doesn’t happen automatically. [Read more…]

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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