Published on March 7, 2025
“I’ve found what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.” – Brene Brown, 2012
Marion Walsh-Gay, our Real Schools facilitator, shared this quotation from Brene Brown with a group of parents on Wednesday 26th February as part of a presentation titled “Building a Resilient Child”. As the parent of a 15-year-old, who has “heard it all before”, even I walked away from Marion’s presentation reflecting on my parenting and what was within my locus of control to do differently.
At the heart of Marion’s presentation was this definition of resilience, from Dr Becky Kennedy (Good Inside, 2022):
“Building resilience is about developing the capacity to tolerate distress, to stay in and with a tough, challenging moment, even when we don’t have confirmation of pending success.”
Within the context of a technology rich culture where it is easy to be “always on” and to quickly move from one screen to the next to find a more interesting video or post, it has become harder and harder to just sit with what is uncomfortable. It is easy to feel instant gratification, and a rush of adrenaline, through our engagement with social media and streaming services. It seems we don’t really need to be uncomfortable anymore. For the most part we don’t have to wait for the next episode of a favourite show, we can just binge watch. And if we don’t like something, we can quickly write and publish a post and get our feelings out into the world with little consequence.
Our children have not really had to wait or want for much, and we as parents are rightly proud of this. We have worked hard so our children don’t have to worry about some of the things we, or our parents, had to worry about growing up. We even buy them smartphones or watches so that they can stay connected to us as parents and can always reach out if they are in trouble.
However, as Marion spoke about in her presentation last week, resilience is like a muscle that needs to be strengthened through regular exercise. Our children need opportunities to fail, struggle and problem-solve so they can work their resilience muscle and ultimately be courageous and engaged adults. As a school we have been exploring with Marion the difference between punitive and relational responses to inappropriate behaviours from students. As parents we also need to reflect on how we achieve a balance between being permissive (doing things for our children) and being relational (doing things with our children). Below is the four-quadrant model that Real Schools uses to represents the balance between firmness and fairness.
Marion reiterated with parents last week that a child’s neocortex is not developed – their reasoning brain is still growing – and so our children need us to set boundaries and be authoritative because they can’t do it for themselves yet. Our goal as parents, and as educators, is to be in the top right-hand quadrant. We need to be authoritative – to have authority as a parent and as an educator – while maintaining our relationships with the child/student and a culture of respect. On the other hand, all firmness and no fairness doesn’t build student understanding and ownership of their own behaviours. When we do things “to” our students or children they tend to act out of fear of doing the wrong thing or rely on ongoing punishments to regulate the behaviour.
In a technology rich age, being in the top right hand (relational) corner would look like setting boundaries with our children and the communities with which they belong. Recently a group of Junior School parents at Queenwood in Mosman made a pact to not get smartphones for their children. This is a wonderful example of being authoritative and setting effective boundaries to keep young children safe (perhaps something to consider at HVGS!). Likewise, the social media ban for children under 16 years of age begins in December 2025 and is an example of a very firm expectation being set. While I suspect this will be a hard law to enforce, it enables you as parents to begin the conversation now with your children about setting limits and/or ceasing access to social media. While we may be highly protective of our children physically, we can forget that they need protection online as well.
The bottom quadrants – neglectful and permissive – can be equally damaging for young people. Assuming that your Junior School child, or your teenager, can easily manage their smartphone or social media account without intervention from yourselves, doesn’t create the limits that students need to build their resilience muscle. Having clear expectations, that are firm but fair, creates the safe conditions under which young people can make mistakes, bounce back, and learn how to behave differently next time.
Parenting in a technology rich context is hard, and parents need the support of each other. Hence the ban on smartphones at Queenwood. This is parents making a pact with the school and each other, to limit or remove smartphone usage at home. You don’t, though, need a pact or a ban on social media to set limits for your children when it comes to all aspects of technology. The goal with technology is to put up some guardrails, or get the training wheels out, and only remove them when your child is ready. Guardrails and training wheels help students feel safe; safe enough to stumble and fall but not hit the ground quite so hard that getting up is nearly impossible. With a guardrail to grab onto, or training wheels to help maintain balance, a student can gradually explore their online world and build their digital identities under your supervision and with your encouragement, support and nurturing.
Looking ahead, this is something we need to work on as a community. We want resilient children, and we need to be more intentional about creating the right opportunities to build our students resilience muscles each day. This can only be achieved in partnership with families.
Resources:
Sydney parents agree to ban smartphones for year 6
Social media age restrictions | eSafety Commissioner
AFPs recommendations re posting photos online of their children, or other people’s children