If you were able to walk back to your childhood, what would you change about your upbringing?
I was thinking about this as I was helping Smallsteps prepare for a test at school and she was making excuses when she made an error and complaining "it's hard" before even really attempting. She is generally pretty good, but there have been plenty of reports that the children of today give up on challenges quickly, and have low resilience to discomfort.
That wasn't a luxury I had as a kid.
And it is a luxury.
It is no surprise there is a strong correlation between difficulty faced and level of personal resilience in the face of difficulty. Due to what has been a relatively controlled environment for the last few decades, many people have seemingly forgotten what hardship is - myself included. Though, compared to many, I am pretty sure that my life is pretty difficult in comparison, but probably not as difficult as my father had to face at times when he was a kid growing up in a warzone.
The hardships I faced as a child were more social at school, but as I was helping my daughter with her homework, which my wife or I often do, I realised that I don't remember my parents ever sitting down with me to help with my own study as a kid. As I have said before, I was left to my own devices and it taught me a lot of responsibility, and a lot of bad habits that I struggle with today. Study is just one of the many.
Our environment shapes us for better and worse, and the support mechanisms we have to make it through childhood will influence all kinds of aspects along the way, not just our behaviour. For example, if I had been better supported with learning math, I would likely have had potential to go into engineering or finance. Having early support opens up external opportunity, because the internal foundations have been built. Without those foundations built when young, opportunity passes by, unnoticed.
We don't know, what we don't know.
And it is because of this that I think young children shouldn't be sat on screens at all, or have the time severely limited. Because that is part of the learning environment, and part of the support mechanisms. And if a child becomes accustomed to being fed rather than exploring, and distracting rather than dealing, the wiring in the brain that would build curiosity and resilience, skill and emotional stability for the future, is missing. And unlike adding a new power socket, it isn't easy to change the structure of the brain, once it has already been set in stone.
Stone might not be the best description of the brain, but I heard a good one from a book where the writer described our young experience like a sponge, where we can soak up everything, good and bad. But over time, that sponge starts to dry out and everything trapped in there becomes who we are, what we feel, and how we behave. It isn't impossible to overcome the bad and react differently than the blueprint the sponge provides, but it is very difficult. And no matter how much the sponge is rinsed, most of the gunk gets trapped in the pores.
While we can't go back and change our past, we can at least understand what is trapped in there and work out ways we can mitigate the problems we can't change, and enhance the areas we can. It is impossible to focus on all aspects though, so it makes sense to discover which are the most valuable to improve. It is like a complicated set of stats for a character in a game, and boosting the ones that matter, the ones that make the largest impact on who we want to be today, and into the future.
Avoiding challenge is impossible.
There are always going to be challenges in life and the more we avoid, the more challenges we will feel, because the threshold to a situation becoming challenging lowers. It is like any pain barrier. Or skill barrier. My daughter might find it challenging to spell a word in English, because she doesn't have to know how to spell in Finnish at all. It is a phonetic language, so it is said how it is written. Spelling tests would be pointless. But it is also because of this lack of exposure to having to spell, that makes spelling uncomfortable for her in some way, if she gets it wrong, because she isn't used to getting it wrong.
And it is this last point that I think is a big reason that resilience and perseverance is reducing in younger generations, because they have been surrounded by an environment that gives them all the "right" answers easily, or at least makes them feel like they have the right answers. And when one feels right in that bubble, without exploring the possibility or having the experience of being wrong, there is very little exposure to failure. And without failure, learning is very limited, as are the skills and brain structures associated with how to deal with failure.
My parents failed me.
I don't blame them though, because they were carrying their own dirty sponge from their childhood and they had less knowledge, possibility, and culture to do much about it. They likely blamed their parents and childhood too, without recognising that their parents had levels of trauma also. But being traumatised (whether low or high level) doesn't mean we have an excuse not to work on ourselves, to improve, to overcome. Yet I find it interesting how many people want to be considered a victim of their childhood, constantly giving excuses why they can't, but don't want to be treated as though they can't.
They revere the label, but don't want to pay the price of actually being what they label themselves.
If we aren't willing to work on ourselves, why should anyone invest their time and effort into supporting us? If a person uses the excuse of childhood trauma for being bad in a relationship but isn't willing to change, then perhaps that person should not try to be in a relationship at all. Maybe they should just accept that they should be alone forever, so as not to traumatise a potential partners and children. If you believe you are broken and can't do anything about it, accept the consequences of the condition.
Not many people who claim their victimhood, are willing to accept the consequences of their condition, are they?
And this is the same for all the labels that people give themselves, or get diagnosed for. They use them as excuses as to why they can't do this, or behave like that, but expect to be treated as everyone else. If everyone else is able to manage their emotions, should someone who can't be treated the same? If everyone is expected to be on time to work, is it fair that some people should be excused? Because people only seem to "not be able to do" the things they don't like doing.
It is like a kid who is too full to eat more vegetables.
But has room for dessert.
If you label yourself as something and expect people to accept it. You have to also accept that people are going to treat you accordingly. If you say you are incapable, don't expect to be included. If you say you have challenges but want to try, even if you fail and you are supportive of other people trying and failing in the various challenges they face, then, that becomes a different story, doesn't it?
There are too many opportunities to walk away from challenges today, rather than learning to face them and overcome them, or fail, as the case may be. The more we walk away, the less curious we become, and the less skilled, the less capable and ultimately, the less we can be included in the lives of others. Another reason why so many people are lonely, perhaps.
Childhood has gone.
How much opportunity will keep passing us by, unnoticed.
Taraz
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