Resilience Grows When Kids Look Up
Something strangely powerful is happening in some classrooms when adults take technology away. Schools that once worked hard to put a device in every student's hands are now experimenting with removing those same devices, and some educators report changes that have little to do with test scores. Kids are talking to each other more, teachers are having meaningful conversations, students are looking up as they move through hallways, and there are reports of stronger community and even greater confidence about life after high school. One word that surfaced in our recent Celebrate Kids Podcast conversation was resilience, and that word caught my attention because resilience is not normally the first thing we associate with putting a phone in a locker. We tend to think of resilience as something forged through tragedy or tremendous hardship, but Dr. Kathy defines it much more broadly as the ability to recover from difficulty, disappointment, loss, fear, shame, failure, or simply not being chosen. If that is true, then the ordinary environments where kids learn how to respond when something becomes difficult matter enormously.
Technology complicates this because one of its great gifts is also one of its dangers: it makes an extraordinary number of things easy. I am thankful for GPS, spellcheck, instant research, searchable documents, and the ability to fix mistakes quickly. I do not want to go back to getting lost on purpose just to prove I have character. Dr. Kathy made the same point; technology is not evil, and much of its ease is genuinely good. But children growing up immersed in that ease can quietly absorb another message: things should be easy, and when they are not, perhaps something is wrong. That expectation can seep into children in ways that are hard to notice until a child meets something that will not respond to a swipe, restart, undo button, or exit screen.
Easy Restarting Is Not Always the Same as Resilience
I pushed Dr. Kathy a little on this because I grew up playing Nintendo, and I remember failing constantly. Mario fell down the hole, and I tried again. At first glance, that seems like a resilience machine: fail and try again. Dr. Kathy agreed that technology can teach one part of the lesson, that failure is not fatal, but she also pointed toward something more subtle. If I can abandon something the moment I don’t enjoy it, I may also be practicing the habit of leaving discomfort before it has taught me anything.
That does not mean every child who quits a video game will later quit college. The connection isn't that simple, and there are perfectly legitimate reasons to decide something isn’t worth continuing. The concern, rather, is formation through repetition. What do I repeatedly practice doing when frustration appears? Do I experiment, ask for help, slow down, and try another approach, or do I immediately find the nearest exit because another option is always available?
My Nintendo wasn't the only environment shaping me. I played outside, went places with my parents, interacted with other kids, got bored, had responsibilities, and faced difficult situations. I could not simply close the program when people or circumstances became difficult. Dr. Kathy made that distinction explicitly: the issue is not one device in one childhood but what happens when technology occupies so much space that the child has fewer competing environments teaching patience, cooperation, persistence, and recovery. Resilience grows through variety because life does not let us control every condition.
A friendship will not always restart cleanly because you apologized. A coach may still bench you after you practiced. A professor may not change the grade simply because the first attempt felt discouraging. A spouse cannot be muted when the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Real life keeps asking us to stay present with things that do not immediately become pleasant, and children need practice with that long before the consequences become adult sized.
Kids Learn More Than Content When the Teacher Has Their Attention
This is why the classroom discussion became about much more than screens. Dr. Kathy said something in the episode that is worth repeating: teachers teach; books and devices do not. Her point was not that books or devices are useless but that they are tools inside a relational process. When technology dominates the classroom, teachers can lose some of the freedom to make eye contact, read confusion on a child's face, pause because the room needs clarification, call students into conversation, or let an unexpected question reshape the lesson.
Those interactions are educational because children learn when they are known. A teacher notices that a normally confident student suddenly will not raise her hand. Another sees the boy who is pretending not to care because he is afraid to be wrong. A class discussion allows one student to hear another student's reasoning and discover there may be more than one way into the problem. These moments are inefficient by technological standards, but they are often deeply formative because learning is not simply transferring information from a source into a brain.
Taking devices away can also reveal the social world that was present all along. Dr. Kathy described reports from schools where children started lifting their eyes, walking together, talking, finding common ground, and discovering things about classmates that had been hidden behind individual screens. Maybe another kid also spends Saturday dinner with Grandma. Maybe the quiet student loves the same hobby. Those small discoveries exercise People Smart in ways an algorithm cannot reproduce. Reading another person's face, noticing tone, knowing when to keep explaining and when to stop, learning how to disagree without destroying the conversation, these are not optional social extras. They are skills children will need in marriages, workplaces, churches, friendships, parenting, and nearly every significant adult relationship.
The Smarts Need to Be Awakened in the World, Not Only on a Screen
This led us into the 8 Great Smarts because technology can provide wonderful experiences in almost every intelligence, yet early development still requires broad exposure to actual life. Dr. Kathy explained that children are born with the capacity to develop all eight smarts and that earlier awakening gives those capacities more opportunity to become lasting strengths, while also emphasizing that development can continue throughout adulthood. The point is not that a child has a fixed set of smarts stamped on them forever. Environments matter, especially while the brain is developing. Dr. Kathy's own childhood is a good example. Her engineer father surrounded her with graph paper, compasses, protractors, and tools connected to his way of seeing the world. A musical parent may make piano feel normal because the child watches music being made before anyone assigns a lesson. The adults and materials surrounding children quietly communicate, “This is something humans do, and maybe you can do it too.”
That is one reason I hesitate when devices become the default response to every empty moment. An airport is a People Smart laboratory. Families say goodbye, workers solve problems, travelers carry strange luggage, announcements echo overhead, body language fills the air, and people navigate shared space with dozens of unspoken rules. A child looking down at a device may be entertained, and sometimes that is exactly what a tired family needs. But if every airport, restaurant, waiting room, car ride, and shopping trip becomes automatic screen time, we should at least recognize the opportunities we're trading away. Dr. Kathy gave the vivid example of watching a young child walk down an airplane aisle with eyes fixed on a game while trying to find his seat. The concern is larger than whether he bumps into someone. He is missing the practice of scanning the environment, reading people, recognizing where he is, responding to adults, and participating in a shared human setting.
Resilience Requires Teachability, Not Instant Answers
Acts 18 gives us a picture of this that I find especially helpful. Apollos enters the story as a gifted, eloquent, knowledgeable man who knows the Scriptures and speaks boldly. He is not incompetent, lazy, or unprepared. Yet his understanding is incomplete, and Priscilla and Aquila hear him, invite him closer, and explain “the way of God more accurately.” What happens next matters: Apollos does not seem threatened by correction. He receives what he needs, grows, and becomes even more effective. That is resilience. Not pretending you already knew or protecting your image. Resilience can look like remaining teachable when somebody reveals that your understanding is incomplete. It can look like listening long enough to realize another person sees something you missed. It can mean allowing a coach, parent, pastor, teacher, employer, or trusted friend to correct you without interpreting the correction as evidence that you are a failure. Technology can tempt us toward another kind of confidence because answers are so readily available. A child can quietly search the word, check the solution, or ask AI before risking the vulnerability of telling another human, “I don't know.” But not knowing is not weakness. In many settings, admitting what we do not know is the first evidence that real learning is about to happen.
Apollos already had Word Smart strengths, Logic Smart abilities, biblical knowledge, courage, and communication skills. What made those gifts even more fruitful was relationship. Priscilla and Aquila could see something he could not see for himself, and he was humble enough to receive it. Our children need people who can do that for them too. They need teachers who notice. Coaches who correct. Grandparents who tell stories. Youth leaders who ask better questions. Parents willing to say, “You are capable of more than this, and I'll help you get there.” That network of relationships becomes part of the resilience system because children learn that difficulty does not mean they are alone.
Teach Kids to Look Up Before They Need the Skill
I don't think the goal is to create a device free childhood or pretend technological fluency will not matter. Our kids will use screens, AI, digital textbooks, GPS, workplace software, and tools we cannot yet name. They need wisdom for that world, not fear of it. But wisdom includes knowing when the tool makes us stronger and when it starts replacing something we still need to practice.
Sometimes the best thing a child can do is use the device. And there are moments when the most educational thing we can say is, “Put it away and look up.” Look at your teacher. Notice your friend's face. Stay with the problem. Ask the question. Let somebody help you. Finish even though you might lose. Sit through the awkward silence. Try the thing you're not good at yet. These are small choices, but small choices accumulate into habits, and habits become part of character. Resilience is rarely built in one heroic moment. It is built in hundreds of ordinary encounters where a child discovers, “This is uncomfortable, but I can stay. I can learn. I can receive help. I can try again.” Devices can offer answers. People help us become the kind of people who know what to do when the answer is not enough.
Engaging Resilience Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Let kids wrestle with explaining something before they search for the perfect wording. Encourage discussion, reading aloud, questions, and conversations where they have to listen as well as speak.
Logic Smart: Give them puzzles and problems that do not instantly reveal the solution. Let them experience the satisfaction of staying with a question longer than is comfortable.
Picture Smart: Use art, drawing, maps, design, observation, and hands-on visual work where the child creates rather than only consuming finished images.
Music Smart: Encourage instruments, singing, rhythm, and practice that require repetition. Music teaches beautifully that improvement often comes through doing the same difficult thing again tomorrow.
Body Smart: Get them moving in real environments. Sports, chores, building, cooking, outdoor work, and physical skills teach recovery from mistakes in ways a restart button cannot.
Nature Smart: Let children spend enough time outside to notice patterns, unpredictability, seasons, weather, and living things that do not organize themselves around immediate human preferences.
People Smart: Protect regular device-free spaces for eye contact, conversation, reading body language, disagreement, cooperation, service, and learning when another person needs us to stop talking and listen.
Self Smart: Help kids notice their impulse to escape discomfort. Ask, “What are you feeling right now?” “What makes you want to quit?” and “What might happen if you stayed with it another ten minutes?”
Remember: However your child is smart, remember this: resilience is not having every answer at your fingertips. It is developing enough humility, courage, relationship, and teachability to stay present when the answer is not immediate—and to look up long enough to let another person help you grow.