Mrs. Temima Cohen
Director of Guidance

Do you think about resilience? I do! I think about resilience a lot, as a mother, as a person who works with teens, and as a child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. I think about who has resilience, what makes one person more resilient than another person, and if and how we can develop and teach resilience.

Resilience can be defined as the ability to cope when faced with challenges, adapt to situations that you can’t change, deal with negative feelings, continue to strive even under terrible conditions and “bounce back” after setbacks. When you’re resilient, you rise up from adversity even stronger. The Jewish nation, unfortunately, has been through immeasurable atrocities and has shown time and time again that they are a resilient nation.
As we commemorated Yom Hashoah this week we remembered those that perished z”l, but we also spoke about and honoured so many that lived through those horrific times and were able to rise up, stay strong, and rebuild their lives. My grandparents were such people and I always was in awe of their unwavering spirit and tenacity to live, to achieve, and to pass on their Jewish legacy.

During the Holocaust, my grandparents gave my dad, a child of four years of age, to the Dutch underground, who delivered him to a very special righteous gentile. My dad lived with her and her children throughout the war and my grandparents hid in various locations, behind false walls, praying that they wouldn’t be discovered. They had close calls, such as the time bayonets were being shoved through the walls, as my grandparents held in their stomachs, hoping that the bayonets didn’t hit them. At that moment my grandmother couldn’t take the tension and wanted to just give up but my grandfather covered her mouth and said “not until they draw blood from us.” The day Holland was liberated my grandfather got on a bicycle and rode to pick up my dad. He put him on the bicycle and off they went. They stopped a few times to lie down in ditches to shield themselves from shots still being fired, but my grandfather was determined to reunite mother and son who hadn’t seen each other in more than two and a half years. I honestly don’t know how they managed to live through those years.
My dad is the young boy to the left shown here with his war “family”

That they survived was obviously miraculous but what displayed their true resilience were their actions after the war. My grandfather started his business anew, immigrated with his four sons and wife to Canada, and built a very successful business here in Toronto. That all didn’t happen without challenges. In fact their luggage didn’t end up on the boat to Canada and all they had on them were the clothes on their backs. My grandmother washed out their clothes every night and hung them to dry to be ready for the next day. Can you imagine!

I use my family’s story as one illustration of true resilience in the face of adversity. However, there were so many Jews that managed to overcome their awful degrading war experiences. Somehow they persevered after profound setbacks. They didn’t allow anything to deter them from their ultimate goal of rebuilding their lives and thus they were able to achieve success.

The Canadian Jewish News ran an article this March 29th, entitled, A Fresh Start, which described the plight of 1,123 Holocaust Orphans that had been brought to Canada. What’s amazing is that not only did they integrate into Canadian society, but many of them were highly successful. How they dealt with their war experiences, displaying resilience, seems to have propelled their drive to reach high goals and live life to its fullest.

Like my grandparents, these war orphans had endured blows to their spirit. They had faced situations way worse than any of us can fathom. They didn’t have parents making their appointments, editing their essays, helping them apply to university, choosing their clothes for an interview, or telling them which classmates to be friends with and yet so many of them ended up not only leading very respectable normal lives, but becoming highly successful pillars in their respective communities. Thus, to me the holocaust is a lesson in resilience.  It clearly shows that people do have the ability to withstand stress, emotional and physical challenges, and extreme life situations.

I think a lot about this with respect to teens since the teenage years can be very stressful, as teens are dealing with high school, trying to become adults, and navigating the social scene which now includes all the social media. They are faced with a lot to deal with and I am worried that kids today are not instinctively building the skills and mindsets needed to face life’s challenges and build resilience.

So how can we instill this important characteristic called resilience into impressionable teenagers, that one day will be adults and parents? I would surmise that writing our kids’ essays, calling their teachers to complain about a mark, getting involved in their social life, asking for extensions on their assignments, and making excuses for their absences doesn’t really build resilience.

Don’t get me wrong. I am guilty of some of these offenses too, no doubt. It is really hard to find that balance between helping and making them do for themselves. But if we think that we are doing right by them by smothering them with our support, I believe we are mistaken.

This week we heard about the horrific crash in Humboldt, Saskatchewan that took the lives of so many from the Humboldt Broncos team. Everyone was amazed by the reaction of 18-year-old Ryan Straschnitzkiupon hearing the news that he was paralyzed from the waist down. He told his father he would be switching sports. He said, “Dad, Olympic sledge hockey. I’ll get us the gold.” Here’s an athlete that was just told that he will never walk again; that his life had been changed forever. Yet, instead of feeling that his life was over, he embraced his new life predicament and decided to set a new challenging goal to work towards.

Talk about resilience!

How can we instill this kind of Resilience in our children? Here are some ways:

  • Help kids keep things in perspective. Let’s be honest, they will probably realize when the world is really ending so help them view all other situations as non-world ending ones.
  • How you react is how they will react. Role modeling behavior is key. If you show them that life always goes on even amidst setbacks, they will acquire strategies and accept that as the norm. If you freak out that’s what they will interpret as the norm and consequently act in such a manner.
  • Let them sweat. It won’t hurt them. Actually it will teach them that not everything comes easy in life and you need to work hard. When they succeed they will feel like a million dollars and they will be more eager to take on more challenges.
  • Allow them to make choices. Teenagers are starting to exercise their independence so they should be allowed to make choices. They will learn from both good and bad choices.
  • Be there for them but don’t do everything for them. Our children need our support and them knowing that they have it is vital. However, supporting them and swooping in to always help them are very different.
  • Model positive and optimistic thinking. How you think affects how you act and feel. If you have a more positive outlook your perception of a situation completely changes, and you can deal better with the stress, adversity and failures.
  • Infuse self-esteem and self-confidence in your child. Compliment them when they are deserving. They know when they’re not and it actually makes them feel incompetent when being falsely praised.
  • Life does not always go as planned. If we can impart this truth to our children, they will learn that we all have to deal with what life sends our way to the best of our ability.
  • Chessed. Instill in them the importance of Chessed so that they have a sense of community, so that they see the importance of giving to others, and so they realize people’s differences. Life should not just revolve around their needs.
  • No one is perfect. Make sure you give that message to your children. They need to accept that so that they can laugh at their shortcomings and concentrate on their strengths.
  • Believe in them. Your confidence in them will shine through and infuse them with self-confidence and self-esteem.

We must instill resilience in our children so that they can handle whatever comes their way including a failed test, a bad essay mark, sleeping in a room without all your friends, not being invited to a party, a car accident, or an embarrassing comment.

It’s not easy finding that balance between helping your child when they request it and providing too much aid, that ultimately gives your child the feeling that they can’t do anything themselves. (Just for the record, my dad was chopping wood as a six-year-old.) But to nourish resilience we need to make a conscious effort to find that balance.

We can’t hover over our children if we want them to learn how to adapt in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress. We need to step back. Show them we have faith in them. Sometimes not helping is helping. Let’s face it, we will be in trouble if we don’t build up resilience in the next generation.

As C.S. Lewis said, “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”