Manufacturing Hardship

How will they ever be as resilient as us when they've had it so easy? How do we manufacture hardship for them? We need to toughen them up, right? Teach them how to take a hit and carry on.

I have been in countless conversations with parents that sounded like this. Partly, because we have been working in education, but mostly because our friends don't struggle to put food on the table, most of them are still married, and many of them have been on generous expat packages in the various places we have lived around the world. But most of us grew up with different circumstances. Stability, lasting marriages, and money are pretty new to us.

My husband and I both grew up in very different circumstances. I won't go into them here, but it's probably pretty close to whatever you are thinking. Both of us believe these circumstances made us into the productive members of society we are today.

So the question that has plagued us has been: "How then do we ensure our children don't get spoiled by a lack of divorce or substance abuse or violence or economic uncertainty? How do we 'manufacture hardship' for them?" These are conversations we had—seriously and often—as we loaded them on another plane to take them home for the holidays. And then life answered that question for us.

First in the form of a pandemic that showed us how insanely resilient and adaptable they were. We were living in Thailand and Malaysia at the time, which means they spent the better part of two years learning online, wearing a mask everywhere they went, and—for bonus points—their mom and dad spent every waking second trying to help their school stay afloat after an existential financial crisis that coincided with COVID. Thank goodness Paige's amazing Grade 4 teacher Tiffany Eaton lived downstairs or I would have continued to try to teach fractions using uneven, badly drawn pizza slices (it never occurred to me that dividing a rectangle into even fractions is WAY easier). But wait, it gets better.

The most joyous part of life overseas was that my mom and my stepdad got to spend every winter with us and that we got to spend every summer with them. This nets out to a whole lot of deep and meaningful connections between my two daughters and their Nana and Nono. The most horrendous part of life overseas was that when Nono was going through cancer treatment, we were stuck in Thailand. We lost him just days before we were meant to move to Malaysia after spending all our political capital and energy on saving the school in Thailand. We got special permission to land in Canada and go straight to my mom, which meant leaving the school urgently and without a proper goodbye thanks to COVID restrictions. But that amazing community pulled off something magical to work around those restrictions. They got out in the rain and lined the road we would drive to the airport waving and wishing us well as I cried the whole way. Nothing about that trip home was normal. Everyone was in full PPE and everything was closed. We changed our clothes at every stopover and hid in hotel rooms because we couldn't test positive when we arrived. All this while also mourning an incredible loss and leaving our house to be packed for us. It was like something out of a sci-fi film, but my two little people took it in stride. They are simply incredible.

At this point, they have gone through a pandemic, lost their Nono, left the only home they remembered and entered their new home by spending two weeks locked in a quarantine hotel room without even a window that opened. Then, they watched their mom be hosed down with disinfectant by men in hazmat suits and be taken away to a COVID hotel for testing positive. This is life sometimes. Jay and I certainly had fewer conversations questioning their resiliency.

But wait...there's more!

Shortly after arriving in Malaysia, we would get a panicking phone call from our daughter telling us that her sister suddenly lost the ability to speak. We rushed back to the house to find our eldest looking as though she had a stroke. She couldn't speak, half her body was numb. It was terrifying. We went straight to one ER only to be sent to another across town. For months and months, we drained our savings to get one MRI and MRA after another, blood draws, ultrasounds, eye training, functional neurology, osteopathy, and multiple neurology consults from across the globe. And we were SO lucky—we had the tools to advocate for our daughter, the savings to get her treatment, and we were in Malaysia where the healthcare—even when it far exceeds your insurance—is far more affordable than in other places. But we still didn't have answers and Paige suffered repeated attacks of word loss, semi-paralysis and then hours of vomiting. This happened about three times a week and went on for months. She couldn't go to school, go outside, do an activity, or be on screens. She asked me if she was going to die. No parent should ever hear those words. She became depressed by the idea that this was now her life. The doctors still had no answers. We were told it was either Childhood Stroke syndrome or an emerging disease, but nothing conclusive so just "watch her".

Finally, we met Dr Fong at the University Malaysia Specialist Centre and he changed our life. He diagnosed Paige with a rare, complex migraine disorder that presents with aphasia (the word loss) and started her on a migraine prophylactic and a whack of neutraceuticals. It was a long road to her maximum dose with an unexpected turn. After tracking her attacks and everything we could (hydration, food, air temp, sleep, screens, activity) we discovered that MSG and tyramine were triggers, but that the biggest trigger was the daily storms in KL. So, in a split-second decision, we quit our jobs and moved home. We are now on Vancouver Island, where my husband has a job leading Pearson College UWC - Official Page and I am still looking for work. But most importantly, Paige is stable.

Her/our recovery is far from over. There is still counselling and she worries that an attack will strike her down when she least expects it. It haunts every decision she makes from going to the mall or seeing Christmas lights: "What if the lights trigger me?" Which they did by the way, so that felt like an epic parenting fail. Every time she rides a horse or gets in the water, she wonders: "What will I do if I can't call for help? She still hasn't had a sleepover since this all began, apart from staying with a very trusted aunt Beverly Ginder, RPR and that's when she knows we are just down the street. We still have to navigate the bureaucracy and costs of getting her medication (she takes 15 pills a day) sent from Malaysia as it isn't available in Canada, but we have some epic friends helping us make that happen Sarah Grasset . I still worry about all the same things every day. I wake up in the night to go and check her pills to make sure she has taken them. Friends and family have been what have gotten us through all this.

This whole process has been such a journey and it has opened my heart and mind to all the parents out there who deal with any kind of illness or challenge with their children. I feel you. I see you. Kate (Katherine) Maw (Inglis) and @Nikki Rogers-Sharpe, especially. And you still show up for work each day. Your strength is just incredible.

I reflect often on the conversations Jay and I had about manufacturing hardship and I can't even describe what I feel now: incredulous, ridiculous, chastened and naive don't even begin to cover it.

So, my message for those of us parents who are lucky enough, as we were for so many years, to worry about our children's lack of resilience-building hardship is this: you don't need to manufacture hardship, life will do that for them. Their hardship will look different to ours. They are subject to more media influence than we could ever have imagined at their age. A global pandemic changed everything they knew to be true overnight, including their education. The jobs they will likely do they can't even imagine because they don't exist yet. Their climate is collapsing.

Hardship is coming for our kids whether we like it or not, so rather than focus on how to expose them to it, let's focus on identifying joy and helping them build their resilience. We could all probably do with a little more resilience ourselves as well. I saw this Ted Talk today by Dr Lucy Hone , and it inspired this post. So if you want three tips on resiliency, have a quick watch. https://www.ted.com/talks/lucy_hone_3_secrets_of_resilient_people?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare