Raise A Tough Cookie

You can’t shield kids from all the crappy things in life, but we have seven strategies to help them face challenges with a can-do spirit.

- Catherine Newman

WHEN I ASKED my daughter, Birdy, to think of the time she was proudest of herself, she said, quickly, “The high ropes.” She meant the adventure-challenge obstacle course she did with the rest of the class. “I was really scared. I climbed up the ladder so slowly, and then I’d stop, and the counsellor would say, ‘Can you do three more steps, Birdy?’ And I could. Plus all my classmates were cheering me on. So I kept going. It was the best feeling.”

I also pictured her at age 3, her pink-cheeked, determined face bent over the little lace-up shoes that she insisted on tying ‘by my own self.’ And I recalled her last year, courageously bouncing back from a run-in with a middle-school bully. “A literal obstacle turned into one of the best experiences of your life,” I said, about the ropes course.

She smiled and replied, “It’s true.” It’s important to think of obstacles as opportunities.

It sounds like such an absurdly optimistic advice: Forget the lemons and make lemonade! But resilience is one of the most important attitudes you can cultivate in your kids—and, while we’re at it, in yourself. It’s how you move past any challenge, whether that hurdle is a molehill (say, the vanilla scoop falling off your cone) or a mountain (serious illness or the death of a loved one). 

“The ability to persist in the face of difficulty may be as essential to success as talent or intelligence,” says US-based psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, author of