Richard Hogan: Why resilience matters when your child doesn't get everything they want

Richard Hogan: The person who gets everything in childhood, struggles in adulthood to make and keep friends. Photograph: Moya Nolan

Words are like fashion, they come and go. Some hit and become popular while others don’t really stand a chance and fade away.

How many of us use ergo anymore? It has been consigned to a different time, perhaps a time of Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Dr Watson.

Working with teenagers affords you interesting insights into their lexicon.

I remember staring blankly when an overly curious student asked me, “Do you have a mot?”

My first dalliance with Dublin slang was asking me about my relational status.

As it turns out, I did have a mot!

Recently, I was asked if I had ever “crossfaded”. That’s young speak for smoking and drinking at the same time.

Some words in the mental health field have become bugbears of mine.

I mean, if I hear another person use the word ‘mindful’ I might actually lose my mind.

I realised it had spiralled out of control when there was a note on a wonky fridge door in my clinic instructing me to be mindful of the door.

I really wasn’t sure what that would look like!

Another word that has become so overused it’s beginning to lose its meaning is ‘resilience’.

It is everywhere. Football teams, expensive appliances, the animal world, even great ships are classified under its umbrella.

But it is an important word, and I refuse to allow it to sink into irrelevance, because we have to ask ourselves as parents, what makes one child resilient and what makes another child lack resilience?

It is such an important consideration. Last Friday, The Late Late Toy Show marked the arrival of Christmas on this island.

But it also signalled the arrival of a lot of pressure for some parents.

For months, many parents have been buying presents so that the financial burden isn’t so great in December.

But the Toy Show can really throw a crowbar into all that preparation.

The moment it airs, children can become confused and abandon early ideas about what they want for Christmas.

This can place incredible strain on some families. The morning after the toy show can be a difficult time for parents.

They can struggle with what to do now their child doesn’t want the presents they have bought them.

In 2018, I carried out a piece of research into adolescent resilience and what I found in that study was that children who were resilient and more able to deal with the slings and arrows of life, managed disappointment and change better than children who had low levels of resilience.

What this means is that children who get everything they want are less resilient than children who do not get everything they ask for.

That is an important insight to have as a parent.

Why do we feel the need to try and satiate every little whim our child has? And what would it mean for us to say, ‘no,’ a bit more to our children?

I often find myself troubled by the final lines of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Willy Wonka tells Charlie, “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted, he lived happily ever after”.

In my experience, the child who gets everything he ever wanted, doesn’t live happily ever after, in fact life becomes a series of disappointments, catastrophic failure as nothing ever meets impossible expectations. The person who gets everything in childhood, struggles in adulthood to make and keep friends.

When I’m talking to parents about Christmas and the strain they feel to meet their children’s expectations, I remind them that when a child believes they should get everything they want, and the world will bend to suit their demands, we are setting that child up for failure.

I see it collecting my children from birthday parties, children unwrapping present after present with no real interest in the gift, just an endless and joyless activity.

So, saying ‘no’ to children and helping them to manage their expectations is a vitally important parenting moment.

Your child should not get everything that comes into their mind.

And you should not feel the pressure to get everything they desire.

It can be hard to sit with a child who is disappointed because they didn’t get the latest gaming device or expensive pair of shoes, but if we help them to manage that we are helping them to manage other aspects of their life, too.

While, we all want to make Christmas magical for our children, we have to ask ourselves, where we got the notion that magic is found in material objects.

Christmas will come and go, but if, in our desire to make it perfect for our children, we place incredible stress on ourselves, we place stress on our future selves and we set our children up for future failure.

Saying ‘no’ is such an important part of parenting your children.

To the question, should I give my children everything they ask for, the answer is: Bah humbug!