The Secret to Raising Mentally Strong Kids in a Fragile World | Jennifer Cohen | TEDxCoral Springs

Transcriber: jueun lee Reviewer: Manlin Fang Hi, everybody. When I was a kid in Winnipeg, I was bored a lot. I would complain to my parents all the time about how bored I was.

My dad’s famous answer to me for years was “Go play, ‘spit and catch’“. Now, you may not have heard of spit and catch. Most people haven’t.

But in my house, it was a go to activity. The game consisted of a very basic premise. I would spit as high as I could in the air, and then I would try to catch it with my mouth.

I know, super gross and very classy. I know. Sometimes I would nail it, but other times not so much.

The cool thing about spit and catch is where it would lead. It forced me to entertain myself and after a few rounds of doing it, I would eventually get bored again. And soon enough my mind would wander and end up finding other fun things to do, like hopscotch or bike riding with my friends.

Or you know what? Just basic daydreaming. But the first step was always my dad sending me off on my own.

Now, you might be wondering, why on earth is this girl on stage telling us about how she spit in the air for fun? And the answer is very simple. We have been made to believe a big lie that ‘boredom is bad’, that having nothing to do is a tragic life sentence, when in actuality it is the best gift you can give your kids and even yourself.

Boredom is where creativity lives. When kids are bored, they’re forced to create their own fun and figure stuff out for themselves. It promotes independence and helps them develop tolerance for discomfort, which is crucial for overcoming setbacks and challenges in life.

We have stripped away the concept of boredom from our kids lives, and with it, the opportunity to help them become mentally strong people. And as a result, we are creating a generation of weaker kids with less coping skills and more mental health issues than ever before. And what's caused this boredom crisis?

Well, for starters, screen time and social media. Think back to your childhood. Think of all the cool things you did.

All the trouble you got into. All the adventures, all the flirting, all the friendships and all the fun. Now take out 85% of that and replace it with screens and social media.

And that's what's been happening for people born after 1995. Instead of interacting in real life, our kids are sitting on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat perfecting the art of a selfie and missing out in the art of living. And as a result, our kids are struggling more than ever before.

Look at the data. Around 2012, shortly after smartphones became widely adopted, there was a market increase in the rate of depression and suicide By the age of eight, the average child will have spent one full year in front of a screen that is 12% of their life. 12% Screens and social media are stealing more than just time.

It's stealing their growth and their mental health. Today, I'm here to call on all parents and educators to come together to change what has become the social norm. Our kids lives and future depend on it.

Listen, I'm far from perfect. I'm a working mom of two, and I totally get it. In fact, a big part of my job relies on social media.

So I know first hand the havoc it can cause, with my own mental health, let alone a child. We can read all the stats and know all the data, but then life happens. However, we need to do something.

So what can we do to help this issue? The first thing is to delay smartphones and social media for as long as humanly possible. So the other day, I officially leveled up to be the worst mom ever in the world.

All thanks to my 11 year old son Dylan and his immense desire for a smartphone. Apparently, every kid in his class has one except for him, and I'm single handedly destroying his social life just by saying no. And I get it.

He's suffering from a massive case of FOMO. But here’s the thing. Just because everyone else is jumping off the bridge doesn’t mean I have to.

Now I actually sound like my own mom. But um, the truth is, I even tried to band together this anti smartphone mom alliance thinking that strength in numbers. Well, it turns out I was only able to recruit one other mom.

Just one. The train had already left the station. So even though Dylan looks at me like I’m the devil incarnate most of the time, it's not enough for me to do what I know needs to be done, which is stand my ground.

You see, here’s the thing. Our job as parents isn't to make our kids happy all the time. Our job is to make our kids mentally strong.

The second thing is, participating in team sports is invaluable and teaches kids accountability and discipline and promote socialization and connection. The third thing we can do, is avoid being on the phone in front of our kids. Kids actually only hear 30% of what we tell them.

They learn way more by watching. So when we are immersed in our phones, we are sending the message that the phone is more important than our kids. Now, look, I'm very, very guilty of this one myself.

And I'm trying to get better every day. And I know how hard it is, but this one is truly, really important. Another thing is try.

Try to have dinner with your kids at least three times a week. I know that can be super hard with schedules and commitments, but we need to make this a priority. Having dinner together helps build social skills, connection and it promotes emotional and social development.

And the other thing we can do, and probably one of the most important things we can do, is let them be bored. Boredom breeds brilliance. But the threat to our kids mental strength doesn’t just stop with smartphones and social media.

Let me ask you a question. Do you remember bringing a parent to school day? Cute, right?

But what about bringing your parent to a job interview? Not so cute. There was a recent study that said 26% of Gen Z job applicants brought a parent with them to a job interview in the past year alone.

Welcome to Coddle Culture, another major threat in our kids mental strength. I like to call it the silent killer of mental strength. And when I say silent, I mean silent.

I went to one of my kid's soccer games, and I wasn't even allowed to cheer or say the word don't. But that's a whole other story for another Ted talk. Coddle culture has led to the systemic weakening of our kids.

When we indulge every feeling and every emotion, we create a generation of kids who are fragile and soft. A generation that doesn't know how to bounce back because we've never allowed them to fail in the first place. Mental strength is built by confronting challenges, not by avoiding them.

So what is coddle culture? Coddle culture is a bubble wrapping of our children. It's prioritizing comfort and safety over resilience and growth.

Here are some examples of what coddle culture is. Participation trophies, Safe spaces, Helicopter parenting, Trigger warnings, Constant praise, No score games, overscheduling our kids. Now, I'm all for protecting the safety of our kids, but treating every emotional discomfort as unsafe or a trigger and protecting against it means that our kids will miss out on major life lessons.

The truth is, avoiding discomfort in the short term makes our kids lives harder in the long term. And this is a big reason why so many young adults today are struggling with anxiety, depression and stress. They've been protected from adversity for so long that when real life hits, they don't have the tools to handle it.

We've shielded them from the small stressors of life, and now they’re crumbling under the weight of real world pressures. But according to the CDC, rates of anxiety and depression amongst children have been on the rise. Anxiety and depression diagnoses in children ages between 6 to 17, have increased by almost 30%.

This rise correlates with the increasing trend of overprotective parenting, where children are often shielded from adversity, limiting their ability to develop coping mechanisms. We even try to shield our kids from boredom, through overscheduling. But this is such a mistake since boredom is crucial for them to develop creativity and resilience.

Research shows that kids who are regularly allowed to solve their own problems without parental interference are 40% more likely to exhibit resilience and adaptability in adulthood. We need to encourage challenge culture and eliminate coddle culture. Parents and educators must come together to shift our social norms from coddling to challenging.

If you want an emotionally resilient person, start training them early to become one. So how do we do this? The first thing, let them fail.

I know it’s hard. But guess what? Our kids can do hard things.

And failuere, is one of the greatest teachers. They need to experience disappointment and frustration if they’re ever going to learn how to overcome it. The other thing we can do : give our kids chores.

Chores. Chores are much more than just tasks. They are valuable opportunities for children to build the foundational skills for future success.

A Harvard grant study spanning over 75 years have found that children who were given chores early, were much more likely to be successful in their careers and had a healthier relationship with people overall because they understood accountability from a very young age. The other thing we can do is create family non-negotiables. Here are a couple of my go to principles and feel free to take them.

The first is failing doesn’t make you a failure, but quitting makes you a quitter. So don't quit. And the second thing that is a non-negotiable in my house is we never say ‘I can’t’ without adding the word ‘yet’ to the end of the sentence.

My little girl Sydney came home the other day from dancing. She had a new dance routine, and there were a couple of very challenging moves in the dance routine, and when she showed it to me, she said, mommy, I can do the dance, but I can’t do this yet. And I was like, are those sticky notes really made a difference?

The other thing you can try is Review, don’t do. The best example I can give in this realm is the science fair, where all the parents do the projects for the kids. It's basically parents competing against other parents for the gold star.

Right? And what does that teach your kids? Nothing.

That’s what. In fact, it leaves our kids worse off because they have not worked hard at all. They haven't failed or achieved.

It's a complete missed opportunity. Parents ‘can’ review, but we definitely shouldn’t do. And another thing that I think is a good thing to try, is commit to physical fitness early on.

This is not about making your kid an Olympic athlete, however, prioritizing some form of fitness is an overlooked and under indexed mechanism. Fitness is a microcosm for life. It teaches discipline, patience, consistency, delayed gratification, and it promotes self efficacy.

Fitness provides foundational building blocks that are all transferable skills in life. Remember, kids do what they see, not what you say. So every parent should adopt this habit and model it for your children.

At the end of the day, our job is not to adapt the environment to our kids. It's about helping our kids adapt to the environment. And that means letting them experience challenges.

failure. And guess what? Boredom.

These are not obstacles. They’re opportunities for growth. Parents and educators need to create new social norms so that we have mentally strong kids.

We need to delay smartphones and social media. We need to encourage challenge culture and stop with coddle culture because we are neutering our next generation to be weaker and more fragile than ever before. Remember, strength is built through struggle.

We need to stop shielding and stop, start empowering. So next time your kids complain about being bored, maybe you tell them about this ancient game called ‘Spit and catch’.