No pain, no gain

Dear all,

There aren’t many people of a certain age who haven’t read (or are aware of) the brilliant ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen. People remember it for many reasons including the wonderful illustrations, the relentless repetition and the sheer joy of empathising with a family who are bonded by adversity.

Primarily, I remember it for the following lines,

You can’t go under it, you can’t go over it. You’ve got to go through it.

For me, this is a wonderful metaphor for life and the many ups and downs of the journey we all take in a life well lived. The issue of actively building resilience is never too far away in schools, and I was struck by this theme in a recent article by the wonderful writer and social commentator, Matthew Syed.

In the article, Syed used the metaphor of lifting free weights in the gym to the point of pain as being the same as allowing children to make mistakes, even though this is extremely difficult for parents who want to make things right in the confusion of the post-Covid landscape. He argues that lifting weights to the extent that it causes pain produces the best long term fitness and physique. This is almost literally the very embodiment of the ‘no pain, no gain’ mantra. The body’s stress response is to fix the pain and that it almost always manages to achieve this.

What has this got to do with parenting and schools? Well, protecting the body from stress can also undermine its ability to perform the self-repair required for greater resilience, robustness and progress. If we compare this to the parent or school that does not allow a child to be stressed, then they too will never gain the resilience and toughness that will allow them not only to cope, but actually get stronger through lived experiences that they (and their parents) would not necessarily choose for them.

Quite alarmingly, suicide rates for children under 15 years of age have grown exponentially and Syed argues that parents’ wish to protect and be ‘overly kind’ has, in effect, resulted in more harm than good. When I was a child, you often heard the phrase

You have to be cruel to be kind.

To be clear, I would never choose to be cruel and would choose kindness over almost any other human attribute. However, Matthew Syed’s view should not be ignored; as he states,

…those trying to help are often hurting us the most.

Perhaps people, like muscles, flourish as a consequence of self-repair and overcoming true adversity?

Jason Whiskerd