21/01/2024
I stand with you on this Em NeuroWild ! I've heard resilience used to shame a neurodivergent child who was expressing that they were having significant difficulty with something. "That's not very resilient of you" the teacher reprimanded. What I saw was a child who needed their teacher to take their perspective and understand that they needed support and an adjustment so they could complete the task they were faced with. What the child heard was I'm not a good person. Somehow the child was supposed to be able to do the thing that they've been asked to do despite not having the skills or capacity. The person who could help them has just shut them down, blamed them for the difficulty they were having and told them the feelings about the stress they were having were inappropriate.
Resilience never develops in the context of unrelenting chronic stress. Mental health problems do though.
I’ll be honest. This image was a whole lot friendlier a few hours ago.
The longer I worked on it, the angrier I became.
At this point I’m so annoyed, I’m done.
Here’s my take. This is my opinion.
It will not be the same as everyone else’s opinion.
Opinions never are.
When people talk about teaching our neurodivergent kids resilience, they often mean teaching them to ‘suck it up and get on with it.’ In other words, don’t feel those feelings. Don’t express those feelings. Don’t experience those feelings for longer than 5 seconds. Please ignore the huge sensory overwhelm that you’re currently experiencing. Please don’t make this situation hard for us. Put aside all your needs and pretend to be coping with this.
That is often what is meant.
And that is a huge problem.
I don’t have to explain why, surely?
That is the disgusting main float in the grand ableist parade.
Just no.
No, no, no, no, no.
Let’s set that on fire.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Separately to that- sometimes people talk about teaching resilience and they mean ‘we want you to do this hard thing even though it’s hard for you and we know it.’
Now that, in an of itself, is not inherently a bad goal. We do have hard things come up. That is unavoidable. And perfectionism can absolutely make that even harder.
Instead of focusing on the ‘resilience’ part, though, it makes a whole lot more sense to look at it from a fluctuating capacity point of view. We do well when we can (Dr Ross Greene).
When we aren’t carrying armfuls of heavy crap, we are actually much more able to try and cope with hard stuff. We have more mental capacity to try hard things. We have more emotional resources to cope with disappointment. We are more regulated and so can better access our logic and problem solving skills. All of these things together would look like ‘resilience’.
Writing up a ‘build resilience’ goal is pointless.
Focus on reducing the mental load we’re carrying, and then watch what we can do. Help us to understand our fluctuating capacity, listen to our body, and self advocate for our needs.
And when crap is actually hard and terrible, and we feel every little bit of it- telling us to shove those feelings deep down and ignore them does not help us. We need to feel safety and connection in those moments, not dismissal or gaslighting. Don’t tell our kids that their authentic experiences and challenges are unimportant.
Because hiding out struggles is not resilience.
It’s just seeds for trauma.
Why are we continuing to plant them.
I’m still angry.
I’m going to post this as is.
I don’t plan to engage in arguments with anyone.
I don’t have the capacity.
Em
