Are Kids Really Resilient… Or Is That Just What We Tell Ourselves?

 

We hear it everywhere: “Kids are resilient.”

Friends say it when we’re wrestling with a hard choice. Therapists say it when a life-altering event is unfolding. Movies and TV repeat it like a comforting mantra.

And the other day, I caught myself wondering, do we say that because it’s true, or do we say it because we need it to be true?

I think, often, it’s our way of giving ourselves permission. Permission to make a decision that’s hard. Permission to choose something that benefits us. Permission to believe that even if this is painful now, our kids will be “fine.” And sometimes they are.

But let’s be honest for a moment.

What do adults go to therapy for?

Their childhood. The things that were said. The things that weren’t. The moments they felt unsafe, unseen, unworthy, or not enough. The big “T” traumas. The little “t” ones that quietly shaped how they see themselves and the world. Some adults work through those wounds. Some never do. Some carry them into every relationship, every decision, every fear. Some unknowingly pass them down.

It makes me think all those times their parents were told “kids are resilient” all turn into “therapy moments.” Were those adults “resilient” as children?

If resilience meant it didn’t affect them, if it meant it didn’t shape them, if it meant it didn’t limit them, then why are so many of us still untangling our childhoods decades later?

I’ve started to believe that many of the decisions we label as “Kids are resilient” moments are actually where limiting beliefs are born. That’s where scarcity mindsets take root. That’s where “I’m not enough” quietly settles in. That’s where our nervous systems learn what to expect from the world.

This isn’t about blame.

As parents, we truly do the best we can with the information we have. We love our kids. We’re trying. We’re human. I joke with my friends all the time about how I’m “fucking up my kids” with the things I’ve said, the choices I’ve made, and the moments I’ve missed. We laugh because we know it’s impossible to be perfect. No one escapes childhood without a few dents.

But I’ve changed how I think about resilience.

I don’t think kids are resilient in the way we often mean it. They adapt. They cope. They survive. And those adaptations can become patterns they carry for life.

What is powerful is this: we can stop using “they’re resilient” as a way to bypass our own discomfort. We can hold space for the impact our choices have. We can name hard things instead of minimizing them. We can teach our kids that their feelings matter. We can repair. We can apologize. We can model growth.

Because resilience isn’t about “this didn’t hurt me.”
True resilience is learning, “This hurt me… and I am allowed to heal.”

Maybe the goal was never to raise “resilient” kids who simply push through pain without being changed by it. Maybe the goal is to raise children who feel deeply supported, deeply seen, and deeply safe, kids who know they don’t have to harden themselves to belong in this world. Because when a child is allowed to feel, to speak, to be understood, resilience stops being about survival and starts becoming about wholeness. And perhaps the real permission we should give ourselves as parents isn’t the permission to believe our kids will be fine no matter what  but the permission to slow down, lean in, and remember that the smallest moments of presence today are what help shape the healthiest versions of them tomorrow.