Toronto Star - 7 ways to raise resilient kids

You don’t need to be on a playground for long before you hear the choruses of “Good job” and “Careful!” Yes, ours is a generation of parents fully indoctrinated in the powers of both healthy self-esteem and a complete set of elbow and shin pads.

But as the first generation of kids raised on a steady diet of praise and “everyone’s a winner” trophies reaches university, we’re hearing some sobering stories about the risks associated with sweeping every challenge out of our children’s way. Alison Sklar saw this play out time and again when she was teaching at McGill.

“I have seen the consequences of kids who have been over-praised,” says Sklar, now an education consultant and blogger. “Some of these kids just crumple at the first sign of adversity. They can’t handle a D on a paper. They don’t know how to handle themselves when things fall apart because everyone has always told them how wonderful they were.”