Want to Raise More Resilient, Emotionally Healthy Kids? Science Says Always Respond to Their Pain or Illness Like This

As Inc. colleague Bill Murphy Jr. writes, there comes a time in some people’s lives when their aspirations for their children begin to rival or even exceed their aspirations for themselves. Plus, if you have or plan to have kids, one of the best ways to feel your work-life balance is healthy is to feel you’re succeeding as a parent: that you’re helping your children grow up to be happy, fulfilled, independent, and successful.

I was riding horses with my grandfather when I was 12. My saddle slipped (I hadn’t cinched it tightly enough), I slid sideways and under, and the horse stepped on my back as he ran away. My grandfather rode back, leaned his forearms on the pommel, and looked down at me while I gasped for breath. “The longer you lie there,” he said, “the longer it’s going to take to catch your horse.”

A few years later, I was painting our garage, reached too far to one side, and the ladder slid sideways and down. My mom heard the clatter and looked out the kitchen window. I was just starting to sit up when she said, “You landed in the grass. You’re all right.”

But now I know better. According to a study published by the journal Pain (maybe Mr. T is a co-founder?), validating a child’s pain or feelings of sickness can make them more resilient — and better able to deal with injury or illness as adults.

But downplaying the pain, and encouraging greater toughness, doesn’t really work. The researchers determined kids whose pain was validated experienced less pain intensity and showed fewer signs of anxiety compared with kids whose pain was minimized or ignored. Saying “I know it hurts” helps keep them from feeling misunderstood, dismissed, or disregarded.

That’s an important point. Feelings of pain are at least in part subjective; the same injury can hurt less or more depending on the situation, the people around you, what you’re doing at the time … I’ve had little cuts I felt would incapacitate me, and large gashes I closed with a rag and duct tape, and then kept moving.

The study shows what you say and do when your kids get injured or feel ill definitely shapes how they learn to deal with injuries or illnesses when they’re adults. Listening, validating, and empathizing will help them become more, not less, resilient.

Other research backs this up. A study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that plainly stating the difficulties someone will face in achieving a goal can actually increase their level of self-control, and help them persevere when they face setbacks or obstacles. 

Again, sounds counterintuitive. Encouragement is motivating. “You can do it!” beats “It’s going to be really hard.” Yet that isn’t the case. Study participants who were told losing weight would be really hard for them, and even that their genetics would work against them, tended to lose more weight than the participants who were encouraged.

Why? Most likely because they better understood the reality of the challenge. When you’re told something will be easy and it turns out to be hard, it’s normal to want to give up. Going in knowing it will be hard — going in knowing there will be tough moments ahead — makes finding the resolve to work through those setbacks much easier.

Don’t downplay the experience. Don’t dismiss their response or their feelings. Don’t expect them to “toughen up.” Doing that helps reduce the emotional stress they might feel — or at the very least, your perceived lack of empathy won’t add emotional stress — and will better help them deal with the pain now … and later in life.