How to Raise a Child Who Doesn’t Break
Children don’t become resilient through grit alone. They need flexible, adaptive systems at home that help them stretch, recover, and build lasting strength.
Part One of the series “Raising the Antifragile Child.”
Something is cracking beneath the surface of childhood. The scaffolds that once gave it shape—school, family, faith, even boredom—are splintering. In their place: noise, performance, and silence, where connection used to live.
We’re parenting inside a paradox: children are more scheduled, more supported, more surveilled than ever—yet increasingly unmoored. Visibility has replaced coherence. Their lives are documented before they’re understood. Childhood isn’t vanishing—it’s being overwritten. If we don’t give them language to make sense of who they are, someone else—somewhere—will.
Ben clutched his “Most Improved” piano trophy like it meant more than music. His parents smiled—proud, maybe relieved, to see their efforts reflected back. A flicker of recognition—there and gone. As bedtime settled in that night, Ben asked, “Does this mean I’m good now?”
The question didn’t ruin the celebration. It reframed it. Behind every ribbon, every glowing ceremony, is a quieter question: Is this who I am now? Am I worth more today than I was yesterday?
We don’t hand them that question with malice. We hand it to them by default—through what we reward, and how we react. Ben wasn’t asking about piano. He was asking about identity.
Good sounds like kindness, but it carries judgment. Recognition is tidy. But what stays is being seen for who you are, not just what you did. In the space between outcome and self, something either solidifies or begins to fracture.
Modern parenting has adopted the logic of performance management. We track progress, optimize routines, and curate résumés disguised as enrichment. We say we want to raise strong kids, but often, we want to be seen as good parents.
It looks like love, but it’s also algorithmic: reward, track, post. Then we wonder why our kids don’t feel safe enough to grow. We praise effort but reward results. We say process matters, then post the product. Their lives become portfolios—curated, optimized, and measured.
Childhood, uploaded.
But a portfolio isn’t a person. It doesn’t laugh. It doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t wonder who it’s becoming. We’ve mistaken visibility for virtue. Childhood has become a curated product. Parenting, a brand extension.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this Mediocristan—a world built for averages and smooth curves. But childhood lives in Extremistan. One sentence can rewrite a story. Failure arrives like weather, not logic. Our systems—grades, leaderboards, rubrics—are built for terrain that doesn’t exist.
I wasn’t born fluent in emotional nuance. I’m autistic, dyslexic, and ADHD. Comfort didn’t come naturally. By the time I became a father, instinct felt like fiction. So I built a process.
It started small. A bedtime ritual. A repeatable question. A sentence I could remember when she looked upset and I couldn’t read her. Slowly, she answered—not with explanations, but with rhythm. With trust.
Insight 1
The activities a child gravitates toward offer a window into their inner world.
Not the homework or rehearsed answers—but the obsessions. The invented games. The places they disappear into. Her world was trapeze ropes, coded languages, mud-mapped kingdoms—territories I only understood when I stopped interpreting and started watching.
We didn’t bond through instinct. We built our bond through ritual.
Antifragile parenting isn’t about cushioning. It’s about helping kids turn experience into identity. That’s narrative identity—not a script, but a skill. The capacity to shape coherence from change.
Since I couldn’t model it naturally, I built routines to help her notice her own becoming. We changed the questions. Not: “Did you win?” but: “What part surprised you?” Not: “Did you get it right?” but: “What did you learn about how you think?”
Better questions create better mirrors. When kids see themselves clearly, they stop depending on applause to feel real.
Connection doesn’t come from intensity. It comes from rhythm.
One mother swapped grade checks for nightly character questions: Did you help someone? Were you honest? Were you kind to yourself? Another family kept a one-line journal: What did I learn about myself today? In our house, the anchor was simple: “What did you have fun learning today?”
Some nights she answered. Some nights, she shrugged. But she always paused.
That pause became the ritual.
And the ritual became rhythm.
That’s where coherence begins—not in revelation, but in return.
Family culture isn’t built in speeches. It’s built in what we repeat. I thought structure meant checklists. But structure hides in language too—in the phrases we use, and the thoughts they echo.
Achievement-first households speak in outcomes: “Did you win?” “What did you get?” “You’re so smart.” In our home, I had to program new grammar. My brain didn’t default to the right prompts. So I wrote them. Rehearsed them. Used them like scaffolding.
“What made it a great day?”
“Where did you struggle and keep going?”
“What made you feel like yourself?”
Eventually, the script became hers.
Insight 2
How we speak, listen, and respond to our children shapes their inner world, their self-worth, and the resilience that reverberates throughout their lives.
Praise doesn’t just echo—it instructs. It teaches them what’s safe to show. And sometimes, what to hide.
You don’t give your child an identity. You give them language to build it.
The world our kids are entering won’t stay still. Jobs will change. Institutions will collapse. Entire industries will vanish before they graduate. And we’re raising them on comfort. On feedback loops. On curated achievement.
Then we wonder why they break when the ground moves.
This is Taleb’s Extremistan. It’s not theory. It’s the terrain. If we don’t teach them how to reframe, reorient, and begin again, they won’t just stumble. They’ll splinter.
Children raised for applause collapse the moment it stops. But a child who can make meaning from discomfort, start again from story, and carry coherence into the unknown?
That child survives.
That child leads.
Because antifragility isn’t a mindset.
It’s architecture.
And it begins in moments that look like nothing:
A question after dinner.
A pause before bed.
A ritual that says: this space is safe enough to be real.
Love with rhythm becomes signal. It echoes in who they become.
The trophy stayed on Ben’s shelf. It faded. But the questions stayed.
His parents started listening differently. They asked less about achievement and more about alignment. They didn’t celebrate less. They celebrated better.
Because the moments that matter aren’t loud. They’re small. Repetitive. Easy to miss—unless you’ve built the habit of seeing them.
I didn’t aim to raise a standout. I aimed to stay close.
Insight 3
Profound connection is governed by simple daily practices uncommonly and obsessively pursued. The practices change as the child grows.
And through those awkward prompts and that daily rhythm, I didn’t just learn to parent. She learned to trust herself.
That didn’t happen because I was intuitive. It happened because I was relentless. Because I was willing to get it wrong until I got it right.
Children don’t need clarity from us.
They need consistency.
Clarity comes later.
Constancy keeps them close enough to ask.
Good parenting isn’t graceful. It’s sacrificial. You give up the parent you imagined, for the child who actually needs raising.
There was no hack. Just hours. Just honesty. And the work I did on myself? That was the gift she never saw—but felt.
We’re not just raising children. We’re protecting their capacity to make meaning in a world that keeps trying to monetize it.
We’re not saving the world. But we are refusing to abandon it.
That’s what a child remembers.
That someone stayed.
We’re rebuilding the architecture of being human.