We need to normalize adversity for students.
COVID was a crisis. A real crisis. The genuine article. Literally the entire world shut down. We all retreated behind closed doors, wore masks, talked to each other on screens, and created social “bubbles” as a substitute for the kind of actual human interaction we are wired to seek out. If you weren’t scared or anxious, you weren’t paying attention. And the impact on students was particularly acute.
But not all adversity constitutes a crisis. In fact, most of the challenges students encounter are pretty routine and mundane. You twist your ankle the day before a field hockey game. You bomb a calculus test. You ask someone on a date and get turned down. Okay, these things suck. Especially when they happens to you or your child. They are disappointing, frustrating, embarrassing, and infuriating – sometimes all at once. They are setbacks. And they may lead to unwanted and unwelcome consequences. But none of them is a crisis.
(Nope – I’m not interested in contrived “what if” scenarios. Missed games, bad grades, and unrequited adolescent affection are not crises. Full stop.)
To be fair, we have been drifting in this direction for more than two decades. The emergence of helicopter/lawnmower/snowplow parents who are determined to remove obstacles from their children’s lives has deprived students of the opportunity to learn from adversity – hindering their path to independence and diminishing their ability to manage conflict. Parents are comfortable inserting themselves into aspects of their students’ education that would have been previously unthinkable. They question assignments, challenge grades, demand more playing time, and are even intervening in their adult children’s job searches and careers. And they treat everything like an emergency. What’s worse, an alarmingly high percentage of their grown children are perfectly comfortable with letting their parents run this sort of interference on their behalf.
Since COVID, though, everything has been amplified. And we have been perhaps a bit too quick to go along when students catastrophize otherwise routine challenges.
We were right to sound the alarm about student’s emotional well-being both during and since the end of the pandemic. And we were – and are – right to muster more resources for counseling and mental health services. More students are coping with significant mental health challenges – including a disconcerting number who experience real crises and need access to care. Also, as demonstrated by the recent Center for Collegiate Mental Health study, we know that certain students who have experienced discrimination or abuse are more likely to have consequential mental health challenges, and schools and colleges must assist them in getting appropriate care. So, no one should interpret my message here as in any way minimizing the importance of mental health and wellness services and programs.
My point is that we need to further expand our efforts to promote proactive mental health awareness and wellness to students and their families. That certainly means helping them understand signs of potentially significant issues and how to access clinical care. But it also means reminding them that most of the time the emotional reactions they have to challenging situations are normal and appropriate responses to the circumstances they’re in. It’s okay to feel sad after a breakup. Or disappointed about getting cut from a team. Or anxious about a big assignment that’s due in a few days. These sorts of ups and downs are all part of what it means to be human.
Increasingly, though, students (and their families) are equating the day to day challenges they encounter with genuine crises. Most teaching faculty and administrators can cite a litany of examples of students (and their families) sounding alarms about undocumented or exaggerated "mental health" issues to justify extensions on papers, grade changes, special housing accommodations, or avoiding accountability for disciplinary violations. Even worse, too many students seem to believe that discomfort of any kind – making a social gaff in the dining hall, loneliness, a squabble with a peer – is evidence of a diagnosable disorder that requires professional intervention of some sort.
Ironically, the lack of resilience we see in students and their inclination to magnify relatively minor difficulties are the actual threats to their well-being. Ideally, students should be learning skills like perseverance, resilience, and setting realistic expectations at home and in school from the earliest age. But we know from experience that too many students are inadequately prepared to independently navigate the latter years of high school and college. So, we as educators, need to recommit ourselves and our institutions to normalizing adversity and discomfort as essential parts of a meaningful education. We need to hold the line when students (and their families) complain about grades or disciplinary action. And we need to embrace a stance of reassurance – expressing empathy and support to convey that we believe in our students’ ability to get through difficult moments and come out stronger on the other side.
I realize that a reset of this sort is easier said than done. It means rowing against the tide of parental expectations and media messaging that paints extreme situations as examples of the normal student experience. It depends on skilled and experienced educators knowing how to guide students to appropriate care while understanding that helping them to be resilient and manage adversity is crucial to their development. And it requires fortitude in holding students accountable for meeting expectations. Because failing to do so is failing our students. More importantly, emphasizing the knowledge and skills associated with good mental health serves the dual purpose of helping students get more out of their education and lead richer and more fulfilling lives as adults.
Image by Freepik.