Talking Resilience with Dr Justin Coulson

Tracey:
Would you say that your child is resilient? It’s a word we hear that word a lot about these days, but why is resilience so important? According to the latest research, resilience levels in our children have dropped significantly, putting the mental health of many young people at risk. Friendship issues, bullying, physical changes, identity development and parenting styles are just some of the issues that can affect our children’s ability to bounce back.

Tracey:
Hello, I’m Tracey Challenor, and you’re listening to the Life Education podcast series. With me, is Dr. Justin Coulson, expert in positive parenting psychology and author of six books on parenting, including: 21 Days To A Happier Family, Nine Ways To A Resilient Child, and a new book, Miss-Connection: Why Your Teenage Daughter Hates You, Expects The World and Needs to Talk. Well Justin knows all about teenage girls. He and his wife Kylie are raising six daughters. Yep. You heard that right. Six girls. Justin, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Coulson:
It’s really nice to be with you Tracey.

Tracey:
Well, six books and six children. Justin, when do you find time to relax?

Dr. Coulson:
No, no, I don’t. It doesn’t happen at all. I wish.

Tracey:
Relaxing is completely off the agenda.

Dr. Coulson:
Probably until about 2030. I think around then we should be able to take a break depending on how many grandkids we’ve got, of course.

Tracey:
So, some of your children are now teenagers, aren’t they?

Dr. Coulson:
We’ve actually got one who’s married and moved out! We’re that old these days. I can’t believe I’m even saying that, but yeah, we’ve got one who is 20 years old, married and moved out. We’ve got two who are in their teens, two who are in their tweens and a little girl who is kicking off her big school career.

Tracey:
That’s amazing. Let’s explore this concept of resilience a little bit more. What is resilience and why is it important for our kids to be resilient?

Dr. Coulson:
Well, it’s probably easier to start with the second part of that question first, the importance of resilience. It seems that if we want our children to thrive, flourish, to do well in life, to have good relationships, to be able to perform well at school or in the workforce as they get older. If we want them to be able to adapt positively to challenges and setbacks, they need to be resilient. And resilience is a kind of a tricky thing to define. Some people think that it’s something that you demonstrate, something that you show. Some people think that it’s what you get after you’ve had to do things. It’s one of those… I mean academics love to argue about definitions of things, but the definition that most people are familiar with, I think is a little bit inadequate, and so I want to extend on that just a touch.

Dr. Coulson:
Most people are familiar with hearing about resilience as when we bounce back, something bad happens to us, something challenging. And it’s interesting by the way we call it something bad, but let’s say something bad happens to us or something that’s difficult. Something that creates adversity in our lives. And the idea is, if you’re resilient, you kind of get absolutely drilled or hammered by that thing, but then you bounce back and all of a sudden you’re you again and it’s like it never happened. The thing that is problematic about the definition of resilience being the bungee cord that brings us back to the platform from which we leapt, is that if you’ve ever been bungee jumping, you and know that you don’t ever really bounce back to where you jumped from. The cord doesn’t bring you back to the bridge or to the platform. You always get off at a different place to where you got on the ride.

Dr. Coulson:
Resilience, people who are resilient don’t bounce back. They are changed by the adversity, the challenge and the trials that they experience. So, I think that a better definition of resilience is that we are able to adapt positively and avoid any maladaptive outcomes when we’re beset by challenges and trials and tribulations, hard things in our lives. What that basically means is we are going to get hammered. There are going to be days where we or our children are going to want to curl up under the doona in the corner and eat ice cream and watch a sad movie and just think life is too hard.

Dr. Coulson:
But in spite of that trial and that that difficulty, we actually I guess pull our socks up and we get up and we get on with it. And I like that definition more as well because that means that you can have depression or you can have anxiety, you can go through a divorce or watch your parents separate. You can experience bullying or have a learning disorder and you can still adapt positively. You can still grow and be stronger as a result of going through those hard times and you can come out a better person.

Tracey:
The research, Justin, is telling us that kids in general may not be as resilient as they used to be. I know it’s not something we talked about when we were growing up. Why do you think that is? Are we trying to rescue our kids too much? Is that part of the problem?

Dr. Coulson:
Well, that that could be part of it. I probably should also very quickly add that we don’t have great research on how resilient kids were a generation or two ago. We’ve got a lot of anecdotal evidence. We’ve got a lot of people who say, “I remember in the good old days when we were tough, and no one had anxiety.” But that’s not entirely true. We just talk about those things a lot more today. Research does show that our children are probably not quite as resilient as they were, but I don’t think that we’ve got an epidemic of non-resilience, whatever the opposite of resilience might be. Rather I think what’s happening is we’re talking about it more and we’re also starting to see society change in really dramatic ways, really significant ways.

Dr. Coulson:
We’ve got a whole lot of really big challenges that our children are facing and they’re facing them at much younger ages. Oh, and by the way, as parents, we’re just not giving them the space to face them in adaptive ways. So, we’ve kind of got both problems surfacing at the same time. I’ll give you a couple of really simple examples. One example is the really significant push down of academic pressure. So once upon a time, probably when you and I were kids, Tracey, people used to get stressed about academic pressures in year 12.

Tracey:
For sure.

Dr. Coulson:
Year 12 was where all the pressure was. But then year 9, year 10, year 7, or getting into the right selective high school or getting into the right team became an issue at a younger and younger age. And then NAPLAN came along and now we’re seeing children as young as grade three and grade two who are having massive anxiety and massive fear around academics and struggling at school, especially because of all of the developmentally inappropriate levels of pressure that they’re facing. In fact, even kindergarten kids, we’re seeing more kindergarten kids being expelled from school than ever before.

Dr. Coulson:
We’re seeing more kindergarten children showing up at psychology offices with anxiety or with depression and of they’re not getting the same freedom, the same opportunity to play. That academic pressure is so great. And when we couple the pressure to succeed that children face today that we definitely didn’t have 20 or 30 years ago with the fact that parents are really heavily involved in their children’s lives in every aspect, they’re over-scheduled, they don’t get a lot of unstructured free play time. Parents are making sure that they get enough of this food and don’t have too much of that food and they’ve got enough physical activity and we’ve got eight year olds running around with activity trackers on their wrist to make sure they get enough steps.

Tracey:
Absolutely. Yeah, we do take it all very seriously now, don’t we? This parenting gig. And I’m wondering, do we need to slow down and give children more time to just be kids and be happier and cope better with life’s challenges as a result?

Dr. Coulson:
So, the research would say the answer is yes, but we have a society that is working actively against what is in the best interest of our children.

Tracey:
Well at Life Education, we’re all about a holistic approach to children’s health. Our program not only empowers the physical health of children by helping them to make safe and healthy choices, but it also promotes social and emotional wellbeing, which is just so important.

Dr. Coulson:
Sure.

Tracey:
You mentioned, Justin, anxiety earlier. We’re constantly hearing that anxiety unfortunately is on the rise in adults and children. What are some of the ways we can help kids deal with anxiety?

Dr. Coulson:
Well, that’s a topic that books have been written about. I’ve been fortunate to be involved in what Life Education has done in terms of the development of some of their work around this and a few of their other programs as well at a national level, and I think that what they’re doing is great. I think if I was giving general advice to parents in these circumstances, I would say first of all, if your child has genuine anxiety, go and see your GP and the GP can give you a referral so that you can go and see a psychologist and get the right kind of help. True anxiety absolutely needs help.

Dr. Coulson:
Now if your child is quote unquote, just anxious, instead of having an anxiety disorder, we can do a whole lot of things in our homes to be helpful and you don’t need to have a PhD in psychology to do them. So little things like just mindful breathing can be… It’s so simple, and yet if we stop our child from all of the crazy thinking that’s happening in their mind and just ask them to take five or 10 nice, slow, mindful breaths, three seconds in, hold it for a couple of seconds and breathe out. Just concentrate on the breath. What that does is it re-centres us in the present.

Dr. Coulson:
I mean anxiety really is our brain going a little bit bonkers about what possibly might happen in the future. We need to come back to now instead of being focused on the future. Another thing that I love to do with my children, and they respond so well to it is I get them to sit down and do a quick visualization. They sit down on the bed and close their eyes. Imagine they’re sitting on a riverbank and in front of them, as the water flows past through the rocks, it trickles down. As they look to their left, they see a leaf floating in the water and it’s floating down in between all of the rocks and pebbles through the stream, through the river. And then it goes down past them and continues on until it goes around the bends down to their right.

Dr. Coulson:
Then I talk to them about how their thoughts are just like that leaf and each leaf comes and then it goes and our thoughts are the same. They come and they go. It helps our children to recognize their thoughts are just thoughts, they’re not fact. And sometimes our thoughts can make us believe things that aren’t actually true. And so, if we can remember that our thoughts are just like that leaf, we can accept that we are having that thought right now and it’s a scary thought or it’s an anxiety-provoking thought. But it will go away soon enough, and we can watch it go around that river bank and then everything will be okay again.

Dr. Coulson:
So those are just a couple of little strategies and techniques that I’ve found to be helpful. The one other one that I really love and that I share all the time is, anxiety is normal. In fact, anxiety is helpful and healthy. We’re supposed to have it. If we didn’t, we would drive our cars too fast. We would jump off roofs too often. We would do all kinds of things that are really dangerous and unhelpful and probably going to kill us because we wouldn’t have any fear, we wouldn’t have any anxiety about what might happen. And so, anxiety is actually adaptive and it’s positive. It’s just that sometimes our anxiety gets a little bit too strong and we need to take a breath and wind it back.

Tracey:
Well, Justin, I feel a little more relaxed just hearing you talk about leaves floating down a stream. That really worked for me.

Dr. Coulson:
It worked for me too, I like that one.

Tracey:
Well, what are some of the things that we can do? What are some of the ways that we can give a child some freedom, when appropriate, to help them to become more resilient, to develop self- esteem and good confidence?

Dr. Coulson:
Yeah. I think a metaphor might be the best way for me to describe this, Tracey. In school, you would have walked along a balance beam in your PE class or in your gym class. You’ve got the safety mats on the floor, the big spongy safety mats. Then there’s that balance beam and as you’re walking along there, I don’t know if this happened at your school, but in my school we had to have another student, one on either side of us, as we walked, and they had their arms outstretched while we were up high, just in case we started to topple so that they could put their hand out and help us to balance again. Now some parents put their children on the balance beam of life and they have a… You’ve got to be resilient and if you fall down, you just got to get back up and get on with it again kind of approach. It’s the toughen up princess approach.

Dr. Coulson:
But the truth is that sometimes our children fall, and they really hurt themselves. Sometimes life’s adversities are big and they’re very high, they’re very scary. There’s no safety mats on the ground in some of these situations. Sometimes there’s no one even spotting them. And so, children can fall and they can really hurt themselves. And when we say, “Toughen up, that’ll make you resilient.” I’m not so sure. And the research certainly wouldn’t support that as an approach to building resilience. But then there’s those other parents, and we kind of talked about those parents just a few minutes ago, where they see their child starting to go up the balance beam and they’re all, “Hang on, let me get up there.” And they actually jump up on the balance beam and they pick their child up and they say, “I’ll carry you across the beam.” The walk across the beam, put them down and say, “Look, you made it you. You made it all the way to the end of the balance beam of life. Well done. I got you there.”

Dr. Coulson:
But that doesn’t help them either. What our children need is for us to walk alongside them as they’re on that balance beam with our arms outstretched, not touching them, but every now and again if they start to wobble or topple, we might just put our hand on their leg and say, “Lean against my arm for a moment. Here we go. Okay, you’ve got your balance now I’m going to let go. I need you to take the next step on your own.” Because they’ve got to do it on their own, but they can lean on us for support. And it seems to me that when I look at what the research shows, this is the best way to build our children’s resilience. We need to support them but not do things for them. We need to recognize when they’re in strife and let them lean on us, because we’re older and we’re wiser and we’re bigger and we’re stronger, but at an appropriate time we say, “Okay, now that you’ve had little rest, let me give you a little nudge and away you go, you’ve got this, you can do this.”

Dr. Coulson:
That’s where they build resilience. So how do we do it? Well, we make sure that we’re in their lives, we make sure we give them plenty of opportunities to push themselves and try new things and explore, discover their strengths. We invite them to participate in new relationships and get to know people. Sometimes people who are different to them. Imagine that, somebody who has a different way of viewing the world to them, so that they can get their head around what life is really all about and how other people function and operate in the same world as them.

Tracey:
I know one of the things that I’ve found challenging as a parent of two boys, now both teenagers, is just learning to gradually let go a bit as they get older. I mean even things like letting your kids ride their bikes to the shops on their own for the first time can be quite daunting as a parent. But if we don’t let kids embrace some of these challenges, then how do they build the confidence and learn how to do life? Right? So that’s what you’re saying.

Dr. Coulson:
Pretty much. I mean, I’ve read stories about dads who have built a drone and the drone flies above the child while the child goes to school for the first time on their own. I was talking to one mum recently who said that letting her son ride his bike to school for the first time, she followed him about 200 meters behind him as he rode his bike until she couldn’t keep up. And when she finally got to the pedestrian crossing the lollipop lady said, “Yeah, he made it. He’s okay.” And the worried looks at the face and she walked home sort of thinking, “Wow, he actually did it.”

Dr. Coulson:
This is what it’s all about it. And we’ve got to give them those opportunities. I mean, at the other end, Tracey, I had a conversation with one mum whose 17 year old was still not allowed to ride his bike to the shops. They lived a kilometre away from the shops and it was on back streets all the way. I mean, it was not like he was crossing a six-lane highway. The kid was 17, she said, “He won’t be allowed to get his licence until he’s 21.” This is not helping a young man to develop resilience to face challenges and adapt positively to them because he’s not actually facing the challenges. He can’t build those muscles.

Tracey:
Justin, in your talks and your blogs and your book, Nine Ways To A Resilient Child, you say that one of the most important things we can do as parents is stop saying, “I’m busy.” Why is time with our kids so precious and how does that help our children become mentally strong?

Dr. Coulson:
Yeah. There’s a saying that I love. It’s a little bit trite and probably even overused, and yet it’s just, it’s so perfect for this conversation. And that is that is, “To a child love is spelled T-I-M-E.” And if that’s the case, what does hurry up actually say to a child? When we’re saying, “Hurry up,” or, “I’m busy,” or, “Not now.” We’re kind of saying to our children, “My agenda is more important than you. I’ve got other things and you just don’t really rate.” What the data tells us is that the number one thing that builds resilience in our children’s lives is a belief or a feeling that there is one significant adult in their life who is there for them no matter what, who can actually be there when they need them, who will listen to them, who will take the time for them. Just like dollars, the currency of our economy, that connection is the currency of our relationships.

Dr. Coulson:
We build resilience, our children feel resilient when they know that they belong, when they know that they matter, when they know that we’re there for them. And that is why, “I’m busy,” can be so destructive to a child’s resilience. In fact, when children hear those words, what you’ll actually often see them do physically is they become smaller, they kind of shrink. It’s like their hearts just shrink a little bit, their body shrinks with them and they just kind of feel like I’m not very important. And when you don’t feel like you’re important and then you have to face some sort of a challenge or some sort of a setback in life, if you’re not very important, then you mustn’t be very good and you mustn’t be worthy and you mustn’t be capable or competent and therefore your resilience just takes a little hit.

Tracey:
Yeah.

Dr. Coulson:
If that happens often enough, pretty soon you don’t feel worthy. You feel worthless and what’s the point in even trying to be resilient if you’re worthless? It doesn’t really matter. You become helpless and hopeless.

Tracey:
Well, none of us are perfect parents and we can all get pretty frazzled sometimes. We juggle a lot of things these days. But how important is it for kids to see us dealing with things in a positive way and being a positive role model? I mean, if we stay calm, that’s a pretty strong message to our kids, isn’t it? On how to deal with things.

Dr. Coulson:
Yeah, it is. It really is. I think there’s a handful of things that our children need to see in us so they can see our resilience, and let’s face it, we all have moments where we’re not. I think though we need to make sure that we, when things are hard, that we teach effective coping strategies, like slowing down, taking a breath, thinking about things rationally, leaning on good people around us for support, creating different pathways to overcome the setback or the challenge and then working clearly towards our predefined goals that we know how to overcome this. Having that optimism, that hope for the future. These are all resilience attributes. Having flexibility in our psychology so that we’re looking at things and saying, “Okay, well if that didn’t work, it doesn’t mean that I’m done. It doesn’t mean that I’m incapable. It just means that that didn’t work, and we’ll find another way.”

Dr. Coulson:
There’s a great saying that I love to share and that is that sometimes… You hear people talk about the light at the end of the tunnel all the time. Sometimes a resilient person will look up and realize there is no light at the end of the tunnel and so they have to go down there and light it themselves. And our children need to see that in us. They need to see us going in and lighting that light at the end of the tunnel when it’s not there.

Tracey:
Yeah. I really like that analogy. And Justin, I just wanted to touch on separated families because families do come in all shapes and sizes these days. What about kids who might be dividing time between say two parents who are separated and they could be struggling with that? Do you have any tips on how to build resilience in children who are struggling with their parents being separated? Maybe taking turns to spend weekends with different parents or just having to adjust to a new blended family.

Dr. Coulson:
Yeah. Yeah. Really tough thing to talk about because, and I say this with all sensitivity and with no judgment at all, I know that nobody gets married or enters a relationship to end it. And nobody actually chooses to be in that situation at the beginning. This is the sort of thing that everybody wishes didn’t happen. What’s really interesting about this is that children who come from families that have been torn apart through ruptured relationships, they do tend to struggle more with their resilience, unfortunately, on average, the reality, but it doesn’t have to be like that.

Dr. Coulson:
There are wonderful examples of families and there’s plenty in the research where because parents have chosen to continue to honour one another, even though the relationship has ended, because parents have continued to honour their children, let their children know that they were not at fault in any way and then done everything they can to help those children feel loved, to have time for them, to be patient with them and to help them to know that they matter. And then taught them the skills of resilience that we’ve talked about right throughout this entire conversation, regardless of whether you’re together or not, those skills still matter.

Dr. Coulson:
Those are the children who, regardless of family structure or family makeup, those of the children who seem to be more likely to be resilient. They’ll always have, and there’s no way to sort of cotton wool this reality, they’ll always have a little sadness in their heart and a desire and a wish that mom and dad could’ve made it work. But if we can put those strong foundations around them, it’s incredible how resilient they can be and how they can actually carry that with them into their relationships going forward and become bigger and better and stronger. In other words, adapt positively to that adversity in spite of the challenge that it is.

Tracey:
I think that’s really encouraging for a lot of families who are in that situation. That you can still raise happy, well-adjusted children in spite of the difficulties that you might be going through. Justin, thank you so much for sharing your expertise on parenting and how to raise resilient children. You’ve given us a lot to think about today.

Dr. Coulson:
Really glad to be able to share just a snippet of all the things we could discuss.

Tracey:
Thanks Justin. It’s been really great to talk to you.

Tracey:
My guest today, was Dr Justin Coulson, author and parenting and wellbeing expert. I’m Tracey Challenor and you’ve been listening to the Life Education podcast series. Until next time, thanks for joining us.