BLOG: Building Resilience in our Kiwi Kids

Now, more than ever, we need to train our kids to be resilient. In a culture that celebrates the individual and measures every metric, young people are facing the pressure to succeed like never before.

Couple that with lightning-fast technology and short attention spans; and you get kids who expect quick results, who feel like giving up if they can’t master something right away. The danger is that Kiwi kids are growing up to be woefully unprepared for adulthood. Left unchecked, this can be crippling.

Former Waikato DHB Executive Derek Wright explained, “We regularly get calls to our crisis line from young men threatening suicide because they have just broken up with their girlfriend, or they’ve failed an important exam and don’t know how to cope. Yes, it’s traumatic for them, but their lack of resilience is leading to them having suicidal thoughts, which we didn’t see many years ago.”

We need to prepare young New Zealanders for the inevitable ups and downs of life. If we can help them develop resilience - the ability to keep on going even when things get tough - they’ll have a solid foundation for the rest of lives. This will help them not only when trying to master new skills, but in coping with difficult life events.

More than talent, more than intelligence, resilience is a major factor in the outcome of a person’s life. This was proved in 2004, when psychologist Angela Duckworth studied 1,200 new cadets at West Point Military Academy. Their gruelling seven-week training programme is known for having the ability to make or break recruits, and many of them dropped out before the programme was over.

Duckworth wanted to know what the successful cadets had over those who couldn’t hack it. They all had similar academic grades, leadership ability and physical fitness; but Duckworth found there was one trait that successful cadets had in common: resilience. In her book ‘Grit’, she writes, “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” 

So how do we teach this to our children?

Resilience is a muscle that you build up slowly over time. Just like a weightlifter slowly increases how much they can lift, we can gradually load children up with responsibilities. They may not always enjoy the process, but kids need to be given the chance to build their capacity, learn to persevere through challenges, and grow that quality.

This is one of our key focuses with InnerFit Education. We’ve spent the past 14 years developing a comprehensive educational resource that primary school teachers can use to develop character in their students. Tailored to fit within with New Zealand’s Physical Education curriculum, we’ve developed games and exercises that practically show kids what resilience looks like in action.

Results have been overwhelmingly positive. Former Glenavon School Principal Phil Toomer uses the resource in his school, and says, “InnerFit Education absolutely feeds into the mindset that we want our students to have; because it’s about character, it’s about skills which they can apply to whatever comes their way. It is so seamless, so easy, and it’s a teacher hack for what we do on a daily basis. Through our P.E. curriculum we can directly teach students about character, which is fantastic.”

It’s time to teach more Kiwi kids the basics, to do all we can to get them the character foundations they need for a healthy life. If we can teach them resilience while they are still young, we are setting them up for life.

Ken Youngson is the Founder & CEO of InnerFit, a charitable trust committed to developing people who are well balanced, inwardly strong and outwardly focussed.