Adaptability: Feeling emotionally and intellectually comfortable with change.

~ Harvard Business School Alumnus

Mother of 3

Tactics
According to Tom Friedman, author of The World Is Flat, this generation will be called on more than any other to adapt to a flatter world, a world with no boundaries. He challenges that with the lifestyles we afford our children we are raising them to be “destination driven,” feeling entitled to a life that is good, unlike their counterparts in countries like India who are “destiny driven”; who have a dream to succeed and the drive to do it. So, how can we build resilience in our children to be comfortable with their true destiny in a world far less controlled than their youth, and certainly more ever changing? How can we help them to learn how to accept, assess, and adeptly move with change? Simply put, by not helping them. Let them build the confidence to do it alone; stop worrying about them 24/7 and stop solving their problems, shielding them from the consequences. If you can’t get through a day without offering advice, managing their lives or running their homework to school try what renowned psychologist Wendy Mogul calls the twenty minute rule. Don’t allow yourself more than twenty minutes a day to worry or to act on that worry, even if you genuinely believe that the worry is in your child’s best interest. It isn’t. Remember the goal of good parenting is to raise children to be autonomous. The only way your child will be successful on their own is if they have an inner self on which they can comfortably rely. When you stop them from doing their own problem solving, you are preventing them from developing this inner person that will guide them for the rest of their lives. If your child presents you with a problem, turn it back to them and ask them what they think they should do, and let them think through their options. When your child is faced with one of life’s disappointments let them process it and move through it without intervening in the cycle. And, don’t find yourself on the phone with the coach when your child doesn’t make the town soccer team.