Kids Have A Protective Shield, It’s the Parents That Break

My daughter walked down the stairs a few weeks ago and approached me slowly. She was fighting back tears while she tried to explain how she’d been struggling with a friend. They had been fighting and the girl told her she didn’t want to be friends any longer. She was heartbroken.

I pulled her down on my lap, and held her as tightly as I could. I wanted so much to take the pain away and make it better for her. If I am being honest, I wanted to call the girl that was making my daughter cry, but I couldn’t.

There are two sides to every story and I knew she had to work through these feelings herself, and would gain nothing by me interfering and overreacting.

So I just listened to her and gave her a little guidance by saying, “Maybe your friend needs some space. Sometimes when we do that, the person starts to miss us and our friendship.”

I also let her know if she needed to vent to her other friends about the situation to be careful and not say mean, hurtful things about the other girl involved. I know this is extremely hard, we’ve all done it. But as mothers, we want the best for our kids, so we try to encourage behaviors that backfired for us.

I was really trying to empower my daughter in that moment and help her feel a bit more resilient by giving her some tools to cope with the situation even though it was heart-wrenching to watch her go through it.

And they ended up working it out, moving on, and everything has been fine with them since.

A few weeks before this happened, a friend and I were talking about this very subject. He said something that rang so true to me, and I was glad I had his words to fall back on while my daughter was sitting on my lap crying:” Kids are resilient. It’s the parents that break,” he said.

And in that moment, I remembered the way I felt when I was small and something horrible happened; I certainly didn’t feel it as deeply as I do now that I am an adult. I carried on and found myself looking forward to the next thing.

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Kids really are born resilient. I remember when my daughter was 6-months-old and she fell down the stairs; she just learned to crawl and I had how no idea how much ground she could cover.

I turned my back on her for a moment to tend to her brother and before I could get to her, she reached the steps and went tumbling down. I ran to try and grab her but I wasn’t fast enough. It seemed as though she was hitting each step in slow motion.

I couldn’t get the image of her falling out of my head for the rest of the week; I felt sick, but she was fine and was hardly phased. I was shaken to the core and still am when I think about that day.

It was a moment she will never remember, but I will never forget. And although it is different than the argument with her friend or her first heart-break, these moments tend to affect us as their caretakers more deeply than they affect them.

We all want to take away the pain we feel when we see our kids struggle with something happening in their life, like losing a loved one, pet, or having trouble in school.

But from now on, I will remember what my friend said. Mostly because our kids really are strong and resilient, but also because I need to remember that truth lest I get too wrapped in their lives and don’t let them work out problems or their feelings on their own by being too overprotective.

They have so much ahead of them, so much to look forward to, so much to live for and they know it. So they keep pushing: They laugh, they dance, they make new friends, and keep trying new things.

Our children are so damn capable, and it never ceases to amaze me.