Resilient Children

Last night after my six-year-old had a very difficult time because he was tired and didn’t get what he desired, I asked myself and my wife, “How do we teach our kids to be resilient when they don’t get what they want?”  She pointed me to this article, Raising Resilient Children, which highlights the need for parents to raise children who understand two things in particular: that there is “an opposition in all things,” and that “obtaining anything of great worth often requires great sacrifice.”  The author also suggested that resilient children “see life as challenging and ever changing, but they believe they can cope with those challenges and changes.”  In other words, we need to raise children who know how to handle disappointment and opposition and difficulties.  Our children need to have the confidence to know that they can, because of their divine identity, face any challenge that comes to them, for those challenges will indeed come.  They need to understand that obtaining good outcomes in life will require work and sacrifice. Sister Joy D. Jones observed in a recent general conference: “I have witnessed the strength of many children throughout the world. They stand resilient, ‘steadfast and immovable’ in a variety of challenging circumstances and environments. These children understand their divine identity, feel Heavenly Father’s love for them, and seek to obey His will.”  We have to help children understand who they are—children of God—so they will have confidence to seek His help and do the work required to keep His commandments. 

               Surely one of the best examples of resilient children in the scriptures is the stripling warriors.  They started out their service in the army under Helaman essentially with a covenant that they would be resilient: “They entered into a covenant to fight for the liberty of the Nephites, yea, to protect the land unto the laying down of their lives; yea, even they covenanted that they never would give up their liberty, but they would fight in all cases to protect the Nephites and themselves from bondage” (Alma 53:17).  In other words, they were determined not to give up in the face of difficulty but that they would do whatever it took to protect their country.  We see that they did just that in their first battle when, after being on the run for days and learning that the army of Antipas might be under attack by the Lamanites, Helaman asked, “Therefore what say ye, my sons, will ye go against them to battle?”  They were surely exhausted from their marching and knew that a battle would bring great difficulty—perhaps death—upon them, and normal young men would have buckled under the pressure.  Yet they responded with resilience, “Father, behold our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall; then let us go forth.”  That determination and resilience came because they knew who God was and their relationship to Him, and they understood that God would help them. Helaman commented, “They had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.  And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it” (Alma 56:44-48).  Perhaps their lesson for us is that the most important thing our children can learn to be resilient and successfully work through opposition is to trust in God.  They did not just believe that God exists, but they knew that God would deliver them when they put their faith in Him.

            It is interesting that this was one of the key things that Alma wanted Helaman to know before Alma left mortality.  He pleaded, “O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth, and therefore, I beseech of thee that thou wilt hear my words and learn of me; for I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.”  Alma testified of his own experience with this: “And I have been supported under trials and troubles of every kind, yea, and in all manner of afflictions; yea, God has delivered me from prison, and from bonds, and from death; yea, and I do put my trust in him, and he will still deliver me” (Alma 36:3, 27).  Helaman would certainly need that kind of trust in God to help him through the challenges he would face, in particular the war, and he was able to witness his 2000 sons exhibit that faith in God and miraculously be delivered by Him.  I hope that I can follow the examples of Alma and the parents of these stripling warriors to help my children learn to expect difficulty and to believe that they can overcome it through their faith in the Lord.