What kind of biscuit are you?
You must be thinking, “what is he on about?” Indulge me for a moment.
I remember as a young boy dunking my biscuit into my cup and with certain biscuits you would lose half of it into the teacup if you held it in there for too long.
Typically, the old Milk Arrowroot would be one of those that would without a doubt fall away very quickly once dunked. Yet at the same time, if dunking a biscuit like a Butternut Snap there would be no way that I would be losing any of my biscuit. It is tough!
Well, it’s this kind of “biscuit” that we want your sons to be.
We want the boys at Ipswich Grammar School to be resilient. We do not want them falling to bits at the first instance they are put under some pressure, like the Milk Arrowroot. We want them to be strong and be able to withstand the pressure that they have been placed under, like the Butternut Snap.
Resilience is one of our values and I think it is the one that is most important. The ability to overcome hardship for our boys is essential to prosper in our world today and into the future. Overall, a significantly greater proportion of boys than girls reported higher levels of resilience, saying that they often (or nearly always) displayed characteristics related to being resilient.
For example:
- 51% of boys and 37% of girls said that they were not easily discouraged by failure.
- 63% of boys and 45% of girls said that they can usually handle unpleasant feelings.
- 50% of boys and 39% of girls responded, 'often or nearly always true' to the statement 'coping with stress can strengthen me'.
- 67% of boys and 58% of girls felt that they could (often or always) deal with whatever comes.
One way to understand the development of resilience is to imagine you are building a wooden ladder. You have the two side rails, then each rung of the ladder is added every time you put yourself out there and try something new.
Walking into a new class for the first time can be a challenge, whether it goes the way you planned or not. It is the actual act of trying and failing that enables you to build your ladder of resilience. There are numerous opportunities in every child’s life to experience manageable stress. With the help of supportive adults, this “positive stress” can be growth-promoting steps.
The ability to recover or 'bounce back' from setbacks, adapt to difficult circumstances that cannot be changed, and learn and grow from such experiences is the key to building resilience.
“Challenges” are challenging only if they are hard. It is important to set the bar where your son has to reach to grab it, but not that far out of reach that touching it was totally unattainable.
Becoming a Butternut Snap is not for the faint hearted but by challenging your son to keep building their ladder with the support of peers, school, and family they will be able to hang in there and eventually bounce forward, not back!
Tony Dosen
Acting Headmaster