Accustom Our Children to Hardship: Listening, Resilience, and the Education of a Flourishing Heart
Dear Friends,
This week’s episode of “Created in the Image of God” with Claudette Milner offers us a rare opportunity to face a vital but too-often neglected truth: our young people do indeed need to be heard—but what are we equipping them to speak about, and what kind of hearts are we training them to build?
Claudette’s life and literary work demonstrates that growth comes not just from being seen, but also from being tested.
She gives every child in her books a voice—but never pretends the world will simply fall silent and listen on command. Her stories, like her own journey, expose young people to challenge and complexity—racism, poverty, family fracture, tragic injustice—and then invite them not only to survive, but to work through these realities, forging dignity and compassion on the anvil of adversity.
Throughout my own career, I’ve echoed the perennial challenge: do we raise our children to expect comfort, or do we accustom them to the necessary, even sacred, role of hardship in forging character—and community?
The Blessing of Real Adversity
‘Abdu’l‑Bahá gives this radical counsel:
“Bring them up to work and strive, and accustom them to hardship.”
(Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, #110, p. 129)
At first, these words may jar the modern ear.
In a world that grows ever more adept at protecting, sheltering, and endlessly entertaining the young, we easily conflate “hearing” with “protecting from hurt,” and “nurture” with “never struggle.” But as any gardener, biologist, or mother bird could tell us, hardship is the crucible in which life’s truest strength is formed. It cannot be skipped—only faced or fled.
Anyone who has watched a butterfly or moth wrestle itself free of a cocoon knows the lesson: intervene, split the casing for it, spare it the agony, and its wings will never strengthen. The insect will survive, but it will also never fly.
Biology testifies that this is true for humans as well.
Medical research now demonstrates the long-term hazard of “overprotected” youth:
“Children who experience moderate stressors... develop far greater resilience, lower rates of anxiety, and higher indicators of psychological well-being than peers who are shielded from all hardship. Conversely, ‘adversity deprivation’ is strongly linked to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and mental fragility.”
[Seery, M. D., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2010). Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(6), 1025-1041.]
Of course, there is a crucial distinction to be made between toxic stress and the everyday challenges that teach perseverance: real loss, bullying that endures, poverty that shapes, systemic injustice that demands both survival and action. We must fight to reduce genuine abuse wherever we find it. But we do our children no favor by pretending that every slight or uncomfortable feeling is a wound requiring rescue.
Sticks and Stones—and the Dangers of Sheltering from Adversity
Whatever happened to, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? Our schools and communities rightly teach children not to use words as weapons. But sometimes, in our legitimate pursuit of inclusion and emotional safety, we err in proliferating the “don’ts” while forgetting the ancient art of resilience.
“Social action,” rallying against every perceived slight, is not always the answer; often, what is most needed is teaching young people to endure—with dignity and self-worth intact—those inevitable moments when the world does not listen, heed, or approve.
Recent data is sobering: rates of anxiety and depression have soared among adolescents in North America, with many experts now pointing to a generation that, paradoxically, is more shielded from real adversity yet more battered by mental health struggles than any before.
As clinical psychologist Jonathan Haidt and sociologist Greg Lukianoff argue in The Coddling of the American Mind:
“By trying to spare children every discomfort, we deprive them of the very experiences that give rise to strength... The more we protect young people from ideas and experiences that might upset them, the less equipped they are to cope with the ‘real world’ as it is.” [Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018, Penguin]
Telling the Whole Story: Hearing Voices—and Shaping Character
Claudette Milner’s books, as well as her own testimony, offer an alternative: tell the whole truth. Yes, every voice must be heard. Every child must see themselves reflected in the stories around them. But mere hearing, in an environment stripped of challenge, creates only echo chambers—or, in the digital era, endless microcultures of grievances large and small. It is not enough to be given the microphone. What matters in the end is what you have learned to say—because you have lived, struggled, faltered, and found your footing again.
Redeeming our communities—or even our own lives—from cycles of marginal hurt, imagined slights, or paralyzing fragile moods means teaching, by word and example, that “hardship is not the enemy.” Discomfort, difference of opinion, even failing to receive what we believe to be “our due” are the very conditions in which character can form and hearts can learn to discern, to strengthen, and, when the time is right, to unite.
The Unity Born of Shared Trials
As Claudette’s writing and outreach make clear, unity is not a product of erasing every source of trial, but of building empathy by walking through real, not manufactured, hardship—together. When we know what it is to suffer, and to be lifted, we gain both compassion for others’ pain and the credibility to be heard, in turn, when our own words might heal.
True community, as the Bahá’í writings and the Gospel both teach, is forged in the honest fires of adversity—and in the loving, persistent affirmation that, even in the fire, we are created in God’s image, and growing into God’s promise.
Is it hard? Yes, for teachers, for parents, and for anyone who loves the young. But to accustom our children to hardship is not to wish them harm—it is to give them the gift of courage, creativity, and resilience, the prerequisites for a life both fully heard and fully lived.
Let us heed, teach, and listen—but also “accustom” the next generation to the transforming power of adversity. For in overcoming, they will not only find their own voice—they will join the great and irrepressible chorus of those “created in the image of God.”
Next Episode: Honest Journalism in Divided Times
Don’t miss tonight’s conversation with Nancy Rommelmann, a fearless journalist who’s built her career diving into the stories most avoid. From The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal and her acclaimed book To the Bridge, Nancy has never shied away from uncomfortable truths.
In this episode, we explore what “honest journalism” really means in today’s fractured media landscape — and why seeking truth matters now more than ever.
Get Signed Copies of My Trilogy
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Thank You!
If this piece provoked thought, encouraged, or challenged you, please like, share, restack, and consider a paid subscription—and as always, add your story below. What lessons from hardship shaped your character? Which adversity would you not trade for an easier path?
—Wade Fransson
