I'm not sure if resilience is ever achieved alone. Experience allows us to learn from example. But if we have someone
who loves us—I don't mean who indulges us, but who loves us enough to be on our side—then it's easier to grow resilience, to grow belief in self, to grow self-esteem. And it's self-esteem that allows a person to stand up.
One of the reasons I wrote Mom & Me & Mom is that I wanted parents to look at themselves—fathers as well as mothers—and see what can happen when a child is loved, when a child feels, "My parents are on my side," that they're not just with the authorities, not just with the teacher or the principal or the judge. When my parents really think I'm the bees' knees—that I'm the best!—when the parent gives those gifts to the child, the child develops resilience. So in the street, without the presence of the parent, the child says, "Yes, I am somebody! I deserve better treatment than this."
http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=5720
(Thanks to Martha Davis for the link!)
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