Trauma Vs. Adversity
🌟Weekly Inspiration🌟
As the school year comes to a close, I’ve been talking to young people about stress and adversity a lot this past month. We’ve been contemplating thoughts about healthy and normal stress, developing grit, working through hard things, not expecting perfection, developing a hard work ethic, the importance of effort, finishing strong, managing parental expectations, and balancing sleep and mental health needs. I’ve been having these same discussions at home with our kids ⭐.
Some kids and some parents just want things to be easy. We all want the “easy” path sometimes. Sometimes they want the “easy A” or to play the weaker teams and win the tournament. This is human nature at times. However, those aren’t really the tournaments or courses that we remember in our lives...
Some kids get confused between working hard towards a goal and Trauma from this stress—equating the stress of challenging academics/sports performance/job performance with significant trauma. Trauma is one possible outcome of exposure to adversity (when an event is perceived as extremely frightening, harmful, or threatening—either emotionally, physically, or both). Kids should not feel traumatized by their school stress or sports. Kids may have moments of adversity—and sometimes there is too much adversity (which borders on traumatic) and sometimes adversity is positive. Kids build confidence in themselves by doing hard things, taking risks, asking for help, and studying hard. Sometimes I fear that we as a culture, and as parents, are taking away opportunities for kids to do hard things and create confidence and mastery for themselves. It is sometimes a fine line between struggle/positive adversity and total overwhelm…it requires parents to be attuned and know where that line is for each of their children and help kids know when to push or when to pull back.
Ask Yourself:
What adversities did I face growing up? Were some traumatic? Did some help me develop grit even if they were challenging?
What do I feel most proud of in my life? Why? Was it hard or easy?
Are my kids traumatized? Why? How can I support them more?
Do my kids have some adversity? Do I believe that this is good for them? Does it make me fearful?
What is your favorite story of overcoming adversity for yourself? Can you share that with your kids?
What is your favorite story of them overcoming adversity?