Some children feel very unwanted by their parents, and even by their schools. They grow up in households where harsh words and physical punishment are handed out daily, and they attend schools that focus more on compliance than creativity. These children don't often hear kind words, and they lack a supportive adults.
When they fail, it is expected.
Sometimes even the adult they live with make them feel as though they will never succeed, and it's very difficult for children to become resilient in those circumstances.
Some children are much more fortunate. They live in supportive households, but they often receive trophies just for showing up to competitions. Unfortunately, as much as they were born into overly-supportive families, they are given the false sense that everyone wins...all the time. When they don't win, because we know that we cannot always win, they walk away feeling as if the world failed them in some way.
Other children grow up in much more stable and realistic homes. Their parents talk them through their hard times and prepare them for failure. Those supportive parents understand that everyone fails, and it's what you do about the failure that matters. Children growing up in these families learn about resilience. Miller-Lewis et al (2013) says, "Supportive child-parent relationships characterized by warmth and closeness have been found to consistently predict mental health resilience in children"(p.3).
[For more of this story, written by Peter DeWitt, go to http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek...lan_accordingly.html]
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