Learning Resilience at £25 an hour

An article in the London Evening Standard on Wednesday 15/2/12 reported that teenagers are having to be taught resilience to be able to cope with failure in sports or exams and general difficulties in life.

Surely this is proof positive that a good many children are overprotected - having to be taken to and collected from school, phoning parents to be picked up instead of finding their own way, not expected to undertake any tasks at  home not having any understanding that money doesn't grow on trees, never having the idea they could do a paper round or a bit of gardening for an elderly neighbour and earn a bit of pocket money.  Not, in fact, wanting to get their hands dirty.  Not willing to do anything they don't want to do.  Not understanding that, usually, people will only pay you to do something you wouldn't do otherwise.

We seem to propagate and even enjoy the idea that the streets are dangerous and allow the children to believe it.  In fact, the more we believe that, the fewer pedestrians there will be and the very emptiness becomes a temptation to evil doers to have their wicked way.  Children, on the whole, prefer to go out  in twos and threes anyway.  Let them build their courage together and have a bit of pride in, for example, reaching 11 and finding that they can go down to the shops alone and get that forgotten litre of milk or buy some fresh rolls for breakfast.  Without scaring them, they will have to be told the same old things that we who used to walk to school alone from age 6, were told.  Don't talk to strangers, don't get into anybody else's car, don't accept any food or sweets from a stranger, if you get lost ask a mother with a child to help you - or a policeman, who were to be found walking their beats in those days.  The dangers were there in the 1930s, as they are now, we just didn't expect to go through life without meeting any.

Peter White, that successful totally blind-from-birth broadcaster tells the story in his autobiography of being sent out on his first solo trip to the corner shop at age 11, the fear he felt and the consequent pride when he got home triumphant with his purchase.  He did not know that his mother had followed him all the way.  Parents of sighted children can't do that, but just have to bite their fingers till the little darling gets home.  But we do owe it to the children to see that they aren't so pathetically over-protected that they need lessons in resilience later on.  Life itself is meant to be the lesson in resilience.