Opinion: Teaching our kids resilience and surviving curve balls like Covid-19

Kids will benefit from knowing the key to a successful life is not happiness, but another important trait, according to a Holocaust survivor.

Our kids have a real problem with resilience.

At the first sign of adversity, they fold. Whether it’s because we’ve taught them they deserve happiness and other hallmarks of a “successful” life or we’ve modelled poor coping behaviours ourselves, I’m not sure, but too many are struggling, and social media dependence is making it worse.

Social media is exacerbating young people’s angst about the world. Photo: supplied.

This is evidenced in the raging tide of mental ill-health as young people fight a pervading sense of gloom about the future and their place in it.

Covid has been crushing for many people, of all ages and circumstances, and while it can be easy to fall into the habit of negative thinking – not helped by “doom scrolling” on our phones – we should maintain perspective.

History is a wonderful teacher, if we allow it to be, and proves humans can rise above disaster and distress with the right frame of mind.

In Uganda right now, a world-first curriculum is helping children in crisis use their experience to unlock their potential.

Not only is Covid out of control there but so is crime, armed conflict and all forms of child abuse and neglect.

If you want to talk about doing it tough, these kids live it daily.

Children in crisis are learning resilience by tapping into the teachers of history's greatest survivors. Picture: UNICEF Uganda

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl

But a clever initiative by the United Nations’ Education Cannot Wait fund is teaching them the lessons of renowned psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl some 70-plus years ago.

Tapping into Frankl’s seminal work, Man’s Search for Meaning, students are being given practical tools to develop resilience.

In a nutshell, Frankl believed meaning is derived from any of three sources: purposeful work, love and courage in the face of adversity.

Through his work with inmates in Auschwitz during World War II, he discerned that holding fast to a purpose was critical to quality of life and survival.

Forget happiness or success.

“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost,” Frankl wrote.

“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude towards life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

“These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment.”

In other words, we all have our crap to deal with – it’s how we choose to respond that counts.

This week, Yasmin Sherif, director of Education Cannot Wait, said the curriculum shift implemented earlier in 2021 had already made a remarkable impact on kids’ attitudes.

Through talking, reflection and activities based on the life and teachings of Frankl – as well as others such as Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela – girls and boys were able to “imagine a different future” and how they might “contribute to the world in big and small ways”.

In one sense, it’s a no-brainer to tap the wisdom of others who’ve gone before us, but in another, we do need constant reminders that we are not the first to face challenges.

Covid has been an unwelcome intruder in our lives. We all wish it would just go away, but the reality is it won’t, for some time, if ever.

We can’t control the virus, the mishandling of vaccine rollouts, the forced lockdowns and border closures, or the blame gaming by self-serving politicians.

We also can’t predict what the future holds – and we never could.

But helping people see that they can control their responses to life’s curve balls is a step towards the resilience children, and many adults, sorely need.

Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail

LOVE

Channel 7 reporter Bianca Stone standing her ground. A journalist should be able to ask a legitimate question without being labelled “rude”. Seems Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is more like Donald Trump in a press conference than she’d care to admit.

Former premier Peter Beattie’s comment on the vaccine rollout: “We’ve had a whole lot of argy-bargy between the governments and politics. People are not interested. They want Australians to be put first and they don’t want to see cheap politics and cheap point scoring.” Is anyone listening?

LOATHE

The owner of a Brisbane beauty salon defying orders to close up shop during the snap lockdown. Selfish much? Not to mention a waste of stretched police resources with officers having to disperse a crowd of anti-vax imbeciles who refused to comply with stay-at-home orders and the mask mandate.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young losing her cool and effectively giving militant anti-vaxxers fodder to peddle their mistruths about the safety of immunisation.