Resilience Can Be Grown

A story and a book review

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Trigger Warning: This essay references alcohol use and the experience of having a parent struggling with addiction.

Photo by Artem Shuba on Unsplash

My children were only seven and three when I took them to visit their father in rehab. He was receiving treatment for severe alcohol addiction.

As an anxious mother, I had worried about so many things. Chemical-free mattresses, car seat safety, and bad people at daycare. I had never thought to worry about something like this.

He had been in rehab for about three weeks when the facility hosted a family visitation day. Since he only had a week left, a visit seemed unnecessary, but it just so happened that this was also my husband’s 38th birthday. With humility, he asked if I would bring the kids to visit him, and I agreed.

We were originally told that “Family Day” lasted for two hours, which already felt too brief given the two hour drive there and back. The first hour of the visit was educational and for families only; residents would not be present. Families had to participate in the first hour in order to be able to visit their loved one for the second hour. “Is this even appropriate for kids?” I asked my husband on the phone. He asked his therapist at the rehab, who responded, “There will definitely be other children there.” That was not what I was asking, but I agreed to attend and hoped for the best.

The day of the visit, I was buzzing with anxiety and irritability. It rained the entire drive. When we arrived, there were only a handful of families visiting. Despite what we were told, the only other child was an infant who was much too young to understand what was happening. The staff led us through the doors behind the lobby desk.

All the doors were locked and could only be accessed with a badge, which I knew to be standard protocol at residential facilities. Several years prior, I had worked in a residential treatment facility for children and teenagers with serious mental health and behavior concerns. I was used to being on the other side of the doors, the person with the badge that welcomes the families and walks with confidence through the halls. I had never been the one visiting, and I tried to take it all in through the fresh eyes of my children who held my hands as we were led to our destination.

The presentation was taking place in a common room that also held the gym equipment. Treadmills and bench lifts were moved aside to make room for rows of uncomfortable plastic chairs.

The presenter was boring. He was a therapist for the rehab with many decades of counseling experience and sobriety. Slight in stature and dressed casually, he appeared to be in his 60’s. He shared his story of addiction to alcohol and opiates when he was a much younger man. He spoke too quietly, his words evaporating into the large, sterile space.

The main point of the presentation was that “addiction is a family disease.” My family, diseased.

This message is reiterated repeatedly in recovery spaces and it made me cringe. It means that one person’s addiction impacts the entire family. It also means that family dynamics can play an important role in maintaining addictive behaviors. To me, it was also a reminder that addiction runs in families, a result of both nature and nurture working together to make future generations vulnerable.

I looked at my children sitting patiently next to me in the awful plastic chairs. They seemed impossibly small in the big white room. I never imagined their family legacy would catch up with them so soon.

Once the hour was over, everyone stood and looked eagerly towards the double doors. As the residents entered, I spotted my husband and gave him a wave. The kids ran to him with their arms wide open. They had each brought their favorite toys to play, Pokémon cards and Paw Patrol figurines. Their father had always been the parent that did the playing, happy to play make-believe or lose hours to complicated card games.

We pulled up chairs in a circle, each family staking out a small piece of the room for themselves. I craved privacy during such a sensitive reunion.

The hour went by quickly, but only because I wanted every one of those minutes for my kids to spend with their father. I did not know how they would act when it was time to say goodbye. I felt numb as we shared hugs and final glances. Our three-year-old, tenderhearted and always generous with her love and affection, said goodbye sweetly and easily. Our son was stoic, but my heart ached knowing that he hated being away from his dad for even an afternoon, let alone a month.

As we walked to the double doors, another resident approached us. “Are you B’s wife?” he asked. He was younger, in his twenties. “He loves you guys so much. He talks about you and the kids all the time.” There was admiration in his voice. I smiled and said an awkward thank you. I wished him luck.

There wasn't much to say on the drive home. The visit was uneventful, certainly not the most dramatic or traumatic experience of the last 2 years.

Still, I hated that it was now a part of the anthology of my children’s one and only precious life. This was not how it was supposed to go. I imagined pulling the worst memories from their minds, bottling them up and throwing them away. No more long, rainy drive. No more boring “family day”. No more missing Dad. No more goodbyes. No more overwhelmed Mom.

When they were infants, I worried incessantly about the harms that awaited them. Now, I also worried about the things that had already happened, the ghosts that could haunt them indefinitely. I had the same amount of control over all of it, which is to say, very little control at all.

Over the last year, I’ve been slowly working on a memoir about my experience as the spouse of someone suffering with alcoholism. During this time, I’m thinking a lot about my children and how these experiences have helped shape their childhoods and their futures. I’ve been thinking about how some children manage to be so resilient; thriving through even the most adverse experiences.

The word “resilience” means different things to different people. As parents, we hope our children will be resilient when necessary, yet, we hope they have no need to be. I don’t know about you, but I wish I could just protect them entirely. Sometimes I hear from adults who wished they never needed to be so resilient as children. Understandably, they feel resentful.

To better understand resilience in children, I began listening to the book Raising Resilience: How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty by Tovah P. Klein, Ph.D. Dr. Klein is a clinical psychologist, a professor and researcher at Colombia University, and Director of The Barnard College Center for Toddler Development.

I appreciated Dr. Klein’s proactive and hopeful approach to encouraging resilience in children. Resilience is generally defined as the ability to bounce back from difficult events or thrive despite challenging circumstances. Although it is often talked about as a fixed trait that some people have and others do not, in reality, resilience is made up of various skills that can be learned and strengthened. It is not something that we simply have, it is something that is built.

In children, resilience begins in the relationship between children and their caregivers. Klein describes the parent-child relationship as a “resilience incubator” that nurtures the inner resources that a child needs in order to bounce back from adversity. We do not have to simply cross our fingers and hope that our children thrive through hardships. We can actively build resiliency by encouraging a strong parent-child relationship and using that relationship to teach specific skills.

The development of resilience can be thought of like a see-saw, with positive outcomes on one side and negative outcomes on the other¹. Genetics may predispose a child to be more or less sensitive to the impacts of positive and negative experiences, tilting the see-saw in one direction.

The addition of challenging circumstances, like the mental illness of a parent or living in an impoverished community, will further tilt the see-saw towards negative outcomes. However, the presence of a nurturing, stable adult-child relationship will foster the development of critical tools that allow a child to self-regulate and problem-solve. These adaptive resources can push the see-saw in the opposite, more positive direction. When the positive effects of good parenting outweigh the negative effects of adversity, children demonstrate resilience.

Raising children is full of uncertainty, especially when facing challenges and hardships. As much as we want to shield our children from adversity, some struggles are inevitable. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, those struggles will be challenges that grow within the walls of our own imperfect homes. But there is hope because this is where the strength grows too.

Although there is so much outside our control, we always have the power to foster a loving, stable relationship with our children. Through that relationship, we can instill the skills that children need in order to cope with any hardship that comes their way.

In “Raising Resilience, “ Dr. Klein outlines five pillars of childhood resilience, with a focus on how parents can actively foster these qualities in their children. In my next article, I will more fully review this book, including a summary of the major tenets of resilience as described by Dr. Klein. Want to read along? You can get your own copy of Raising Resilience here. (Note: I’m not being paid to recommend this book. I’m genuinely excited about the material and think it’s a great fit for my readers!)

Do you have questions about resilience? Feel free to share in the comments, and I will keep them in mind as I'm preparing to write more about raising resilient kids.

Psstt…

As I mentioned, I hope to someday publish a memoir about balancing life as a psychologist and mother while my husband struggled with addiction. If that’s something you might be interested in reading more about, please consider showing your support by subscribing or following here on substack. It helps publishers see the potential in my writing. Thank you.

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Disclosure: Dr. Amber_Writes is a newsletter designed to be informational, entertaining, and engaging. It is not therapy. Following this newsletter does not establish a therapeutic relationship with me. Dr. Amber_Writes, and other written communication by Amber Groomes on Substack, is not a substitute for treatment, diagnosis, or consultation with a licensed mental health professional. I assume no liability for any action taken in reliance on my writing here at Dr. Amber_Writes.

1. In Brief: Resilience Series from The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University