Becky Diamond is a reporter who has spent years and years in actual war zones. But now she’s really scared.
She’s worried about what is happening to childhood. The scheduling, supervising, intervening, optimizing — and the psychological issues those can engender.
So she wrote a letter to her son reminding him — and herself — that resilience is a muscle that you need to build. The building begins in childhood. When you’re trusted to roll with some punches, it doesn’t really matter whether you pop back up or pause to lick some wounds, because either way you have gotten a little experience handling things. This is to the good.
Here is Becky’s letter, on the Psychology Today blog. Warning — it starts out very dark.
And here’s a little help if you need it: The Let Grow Independence Kit that can make it easier to start giving kids some independence. (It’s a free download.)
Good luck to us all. – L.
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash