Hard Doesn’t Have to Mean Heartbreak
February is traditionally associated with Valentine’s Day and affairs of the heart. From the perspective of ADHD and Executive Function, heartbreak doesn’t pertain only to romantic relationships. Dr. William Dodson explains in 3 Defining Features of ADHD that Everyone Overlooks (ADDitude Magazine, January 16, 2024), “98-99% of adolescents and adults with ADHD acknowledge experiencing Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) […] an intense vulnerability to the perception of being rejected, teased or criticized by important people in your life.”
Extra sensitivity to criticism and perceived failure can leave a person vulnerable when things don’t go as planned. And if as parents we are doing everything we can to smooth the way when things get hard, we may in fact be doing a disservice to our children and adolescents who need to develop strategies to build resiliency.
Learning From Failure
The Mayo Clinic offers several tips to build resiliency. Three of our favorites speak directly to embracing the lessons of failure and building on experiential learning:
Make every day have meaning. It’s often the little things that get us through. Setting a small, attainable goal can help frame each day as a new opportunity for success.
Learn from the past. Has there been another time when you’ve been in a similar situation? What did you do then, and how might you apply or change those lessons now? The Mayo Clinic suggests journaling about past events to help explore patterns of behavior.
Take action. Make a plan, follow through, adjust as necessary. Even a plan that isn’t successful is an improvement over ignoring a problem and hoping it will go away.
What Does Resilience Look Like?
One of the parents we work with told the following story about her high-school aged son to demonstrate how far he’d come with his resilience. After years spent helping him advocate to his teachers for support and develop strategies to deal with unexpected grades, she picked him up from school one afternoon and was initially disheartened to hear that he had failed a math quiz. But before she could even say anything, her son continued, “So, I went to the teacher after class and asked what I could do to improve. I’ll be meeting with her after school tomorrow to go over the lesson again, and she’s going to let me retake the quiz.” In the past, a failed quiz might have resulted in tears and self-loathing. By practicing and planning for situations like these, over time the resilience-building strategies kicked in.
Nobody is proud of failure, but acknowledging mistakes without shame and making a plan to be more successful the next time a similar situation arises is what resilience is all about. The very definition, after all, is the ability to bounce back.