The Atlanta Journal Constitution – Maureen Downey and James K. Rilling
“My 5-year-old stood crying on the basketball court; he’d banged his head slightly and we took him out of the game. He soon settled down and at half-time, I asked him if he wanted to get back in. To my surprise he said yes. In the second half, he got two rebounds and made his first basket ever. As a college professor, I’ve been hearing about rising rates of depression and anxiety among college students. I recently asked two mental health providers why this is happening and both independently offered lack of resilience as an explanation. This begs the question of how we cultivate resilience in our own children. Many of us strive to provide our children with warm, sensitive and nurturing environments that will facilitate their development into intelligent, thoughtful and empathic adults. But that’s not all they will need. They will also need to deal with adversity and overcome it, and, especially in a society like ours, they will probably need to compete.”(more)