Fostering Resilience by Maureen Eich VanWalleghan

I am so happy to be in a new year. My birthday was at the end of December and I always appreciate new beginnings. With a December birthday there is nothing that compares to the birthday wishes on Facebook. All the wishes remind me of blowing a dandelion. I feel hopeful with the seeds scattered to the wind—the possibility of new growth. All that love helped as this week I reformatted my resume and cut off a lot of dead wood as they say. Looking at my resume now feels just like when I get a great haircut: a sense of lightness and confidence. Next up, an actual haircut.

January screamed by and Christmas is almost completely eradicated from my home. I am taking down the Christmas cards this weekend. Over the past months through the holiday season I have been thinking about microaggressions and how to foster resilience. As a college professor this term has been coming up a great deal in regards to offensive behavior.

I think the issue of microaggressions crystallized for me after an incident at my local Ford dealership on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The check engine light came on in my truck and I made an appointment to have a diagnostic scan to see what was wrong.

When I arrived I confirmed the price for the scan and went to the waiting room. After bit the diesel mechanic came back with the code for what the problem was and an estimate for work to be done (in the $700 range). First red flag: the price for the diagnostic was higher than what he had quoted me one hour before. Next he sort of explained what was wrong and noted in rather dramatic terms that while I was driving I could lose power and have an accident.

I am no mechanic, but I do have a pretty good understanding of vehicles. And as a woman, I have many times experienced the fear strategy employed by male mechanics to expedite getting work done a car. I will admit in the moment I was pretty angry at the lack of real information and the strong-arm tactic. I pointed out he needed to adjust the price of the diagnostic and I would wait to have the work done.

I went to pay and the diagnostic price was back to the original amount quoted, but a new fee had been added. In the moment I stayed calm and let him know that I did not trust him and that I would get the work done somewhere else.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!! Microaggression I thought to myself as I drove home. Okay, let’s consider that I am treading into territory, in which some might dismiss my experience due to my race, economic status and gender. As a white educated woman some may feel I am misusing the term microaggression, but after reviewing the document “Diversity in the Classroom, UCLA Diversity & Faculty Development, 2014” adapted from Sue, Derald Wing, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation, Wiley & Sons, 2010—microaggression fits this situation. Once home I was still fuming and wondered what I wanted to do. I kept asking myself how does one address microaggression. Raising a daughter, I felt I really wanted to consider my response and my example.

I want to say that this is not a treatise dissecting microaggression, the term or the phenomenon. Rather my goal is much broader in scope than the term microaggression, which has a very specific definition. Really I am interested in how one responds to obnoxiousness in human communications: the obliviousness of assumptions made and then spoken or acted upon that human beings give out and received on regular basis.

So let’s take a commercial break.

Here is a moment of possible self-censorship…

I am wondering if I should proceed. The fear of attack because my thinking might be perceived as politically incorrect gives me pause. So much shaming happens that in many ways real discourse is eliminated before it even starts. As a trigger warning I may make folks mad, but really my intent is to have a dialogue. These days debate has become a lost art, but here goes.

Microaggression is the skinned knee of human communication.

It’s real and it hurts. When my daughter was little whenever she fell down I would help her back up, wipe away her tears, have her dust herself off and I would acknowledge that the event was startling, but not dire. We would possibly put a band-aid on the minor wound and I would send her off to play again.

I know some might think this is unacceptable. Sometimes there was a silence just after a fall before the loud wail, which would signify the intensity of the injury. Of course at those times more attention was needed and given, but still part of the process was for my daughter to physically dust herself off.

It is this act of dusting oneself off and getting back up that I think is essential to creating resilience, which is something that I want my daughter to have. I want her to be able to get back up. The world is fraught with obstacles, things that knock one down and at times offensive interactions. In thinking about the mechanic episode I have continued to think about what my response is to that guy’s obnoxiousness. I could let my pocketbook do the talking. I could write a letter to the dealership. Or I could feel good that in the moment I was able to say that I did not trust him, which was the real issue of the situation. When I was younger I would get mad and be rude, which did not get me what I wanted in the long run. Saying what I felt about not trusting this man, was a more considered and satisfying response and maybe could impact his future interactions or maybe not. I dusted myself off and moved on.

I don’t know if other parents think about fostering resilience, but it’s a quality I believe is very important. Of course, there are limits. My husband and I recently addressed a situation of ongoing, almost daily (for a semester) harassment/bullying/microaggression/teasing—what I would describe as a really persistent case of unkindness—by a boy in my daughter’s class that was really upsetting to her. It was the moment of the loud wail and the situation definitely required more attention. For me, the most important thing was that my daughter in a safe way (mediated with the teacher) got to express to the boy that his actions were hurting her and that she wanted his actions to stop.

I think it is the honest response by the receiver that can have the most impact when considering the issue of microaggression. The dusting oneself off, acknowledging that what transpired was startling and directly stating how it makes one feel could do a great deal to counteract microaggressions. At least that’s my hope. And for my daughter, I am working to facilitate that direct response to harassment, bullying, microaggression, teasing, and general unkindness—I want to foster resilience against the invisible skinned knees of human communication.

Microaggression is real. Having a name for the obnoxiousness one can encounter in the world because of race, gender or sexual orientation helps to bring into consciousness the ways in which humans can examine their frailties and work on stepping beyond their unconscious prejudices. What I hope is that in learning to dust herself off, my daughter will be able to distinguish between things that are startling and things that are unacceptable. And then act accordingly.

Parents are doing their best to raise human beings that contribute to the greater good of the world. Let us consider how to generate more resilience to counteract microaggression and other obnoxious behavior with clear direct response starting at an early age.

Tags: developing resilience in children, Maureen Eich VanWalleghan, microaggressions, skinned knees