(Dani Gaskell contributed to this article.)
“I’ve been punching above my weight my whole life—not because I wanted to prove anyone wrong, but because I refused to ever leave the ring.”
“Pomp and Circumstance” is in the air as talented young graduates prepare for the next phase in their journey. But not all kids will be celebrating. Some suffer the pain and agony of intense struggle. They are the disadvantaged, at-risk children, following a predictable doomed path of decline where others have opportunity….
In the 1960s, a study was conducted in which teachers were informed that some of their students were “intellectually gifted.” These randomly selected students showed significantly higher gains in IQ scores compared to classmates. The rub? They weren’t gifted. The teachers were told a fable and increased their standards, which the kids rose to meet. This showed how positive expectations impact student performance, a phenomenon known as The Pygmalion Effect.
Similarly, a longitudinal study tracked the Kids of Kauai, during which multiple high-risk factors such as poverty and family instability lead to expectations of doom and failure. Yet, a large number–one-third!–demonstrated remarkable resilience, developing into competent and well-adjusted adults.
The stories are all around us. We see people who are supposed to fail, but time and again don’t. Why? What made the difference? Why are we not paying more attention to what works when it’s staring us in the face?
A Tale of Two Struggles
Let’s take a closer look at two people who certainly had good reasons to fail, and yet . . . .
The son of a single mother had been evaluated by the school psychologist, and was flagged for failure. Her report was uncompromising. Here is a summary:
His childhood was a constant uphill battle; below-average intelligence and depressed verbal scores made learning and communicating a struggle. Socially, he was lost, marked by significantly depressed social awareness and interactions, which often led to hostility and poor impulse control when frustration mounted…
Imagine being the parent receiving this news? Kicking a horse when it’s down?
Here is the story of another child who faced similar struggles in her academic years, in her own words:
I felt useless when I couldn’t succeed. Like, why even try? I felt blindsided by all that went wrong. People taught me to see the positives to succeed. There were cheer coaches who pushed me through. Mrs. Fleming taught me for 2 years and she helped me believe. I struggled in her class, didn’t want to try and felt it was pointless.
I have found this past year what she has taught me doesn’t just help me with school skills but teaches me life skills like never giving up on yourself, even when you’re at your breaking point. I learned if you push through, you won’t have any regrets.
I ask educators to make predictions of these children, and those predictions are stark. People think poorly of difficult children such as these, and how likely failure looms. We are quick to imagine these children will struggle into adulthood.
Over the years, however, my research and stories keep reinforcing the same theme: more children overcome failure than we expect, and we are always surprised. We shouldn’t be! What’s more, studying these children, and how and why they overcame, such as the Kids of Kauai, provides strategies to help countless others lost in a fog.
The ingredients to success?
- 1. Non-parental mentors
- A strong affiliation with a group purpose larger than themselves
- Most of all, resilience
What makes resilience so empowering is that it can be learned–it doesn’t have to be instinctive.
Stacking Small Wins
You might be surprised to learn that one of the children from above was me. This gives me the opportunity to empower children. As a non-parental mentor, I see a light where one wasn’t present. Providing this kind of hope to at-risk students gives them a chance, and they start to find success, one small win after another.
Small wins are powerful, incremental, and time-tested. It works. Showing children this path is energizing, and seeing students step into it creates the inspiration to want to keep going.
The other child from above is my daughter. She called me one afternoon on FaceTime, when she was in fifth grade. It was one of the first times I saw the stark reality of her struggle. There had been other times, sure, but patient adults worked with us to manage her challenges. This time seemed different…
Dani had so many characteristics that matched mine. This is likely what made it more difficult for me to accept that she would face the same struggle, the torture, that I had endured. I wanted to cradle her in my arms and make it all better.
The next few years featured similar scenes. Calls from the school. Emails from teachers. Another day in 8th grade she got into a fight in the school cafeteria, which resulted in her removal from the cheerleading team. Then, one day the school called to report that she had been bullied by girls from the team, saying she no longer belonged in the group, since she was off the team. It was kicking a horse when she was down.
The surreal truth was hearing her say, every day, “I hate school,” from fifth through tenth grade. It was painful to hear because I knew how she felt. She tried out for a competitive cheer team, made the highest level, and was quickly demoted to a mediocre level. She would come out of practice, crying and anxious.
It’s hard to pinpoint the transformation. A high school teacher reached out to tell me she had more than she thought in her. As her grades surged, she was also showing incremental success at her new, more family-oriented cheer gym. My little girl made the highest level team and around the same time, I began to notice she wasn’t saying the dreaded quote, “I hate school….”
One small win after another. That’s what fertilizes a slight edge, which becomes impressive gains. Captain of her cheer team, cum laude academics, and she got accepted to her reach-school.
Not every step is a success, it’s a jagged line, and she has a keener understanding about staying in the ring, rather than striking gold.
Helping One Struggling Child At A Time
I’m far from a perfect father, but I got to share my story with Dani, and then celebrate her successes when it seemed like too many failures impacted her well-being and belief in herself. She stopped saying, “I hate school,” and the struggling little girl became a resilient young woman.
What was happening around her was the belief she internalized, that she could build on her small wins until one day she was a proud graduate and made it to her dream school, Penn State.
A beacon of hope was all she needed. When she started to hear from those like her teacher and coaches about how to believe, her very own non-parental mentors penetrated the shell of doom in which so many drown. That barrier broke down, little by little, until she became a resilient young woman. Like her dad, far from perfect, but she is hopeful and unrelenting.
More kids should benefit from the challenges we’ve overcome. Let’s start teaching them, one struggling child at a time.