Does true grit just belong in movies? Or can we teach it to our children? | Yvonne Roberts
Crises may harden the resilience of some young people. But it won’t happen without a dedicated plan
Sir John Bell, who is at the centre of Britain’s Covid vaccination programme, spent a year in hospital with polio as a child. That setback, he said last week, helped him to become successful: “If stuff comes at you, you just have to get on and do what’s best.” Bell thinks that, similarly, the experience of the pandemic will give this generation of young people an inoculation of resilience. “You might well end up with a generation of high achievers,” he said.
He was speaking in the same week that the Prince’s Trust warned of the lockdown’s “devastating toll” on the wellbeing of young people, especially those not in education, employment or training. The trust’s youth index gauges happiness and confidence in areas that include physical and mental health and working lives. Half of the 16- to 25-year-olds surveyed said their mental health had deteriorated since the start of the pandemic.
Read the original article at The Guardian