Many parents I know – myself included – have lived that familiar moment when a child comes home from school quieter than usual. Shoes are left by the door, the backpack is placed aside without a word, and when we ask the routine question, “How was your day?”, the answer comes softly: “I don’t want to go tomorrow.”
Sometimes the reason is clear: a disagreement with a friend or feeling left out during break time. At other times, the child cannot fully explain what happened; they only know that something felt uncomfortable. These small, everyday moments unfold in many homes and quietly remind us that even confident, happy children can feel overwhelmed by experiences adults might easily overlook.
A question I hear often from parents, and occasionally find myself asking, is whether we have made childhood too easy. Do we offer our children so much comfort, reassurance and protection that even minor difficulties now feel unusually heavy? Or is this not “spoiling” at all, but simply the natural outcome of raising children in a world very different from the one we grew up in?
The question, then, is not whether parents love their children too much, but whether modern childhood leaves enough room for discomfort. When protection becomes constant and frustration is quickly removed, children lose the opportunity to practise emotional recovery. In this sense, what is often described as “spoiling” is less about excess, and more about the absence of everyday emotional friction – the small, manageable challenges through which resilience is quietly built.
Many of us grew up in Emirati neighbourhoods, known as “freej”, where childhood extended beyond the home and the classroom. Children played outdoors, moved freely between houses and learnt social lessons through daily interactions – resolving disagreements, waiting their turn and navigating friendships with minimal adult intervention. That environment, informal as it was, exposed children to conflict, disappointment and repair, and in doing so, helped build resilience without naming it.
Today, that communal setting has largely disappeared. Urban development has reshaped neighbourhoods, replacing shared outdoor spaces with more private, structured and closely supervised environments. While these changes have brought greater safety and comfort, they have also reduced the unplanned, everyday experiences through which children once learnt how to cope, adapt and recover on their own.
Children today grow up surrounded by opportunities their parents never imagined, yet they also face pressures that appear earlier and with greater intensity than in previous generations. Childhood now unfolds within fast-paced schools, heightened expectations and a digital world that rarely pauses.
In the UAE, educators, school counsellors and psychologists increasingly point to a noticeable shift in children’s emotional patterns. Many observe lower tolerance for stress, heightened sensitivity to peer dynamics and greater difficulty recovering from everyday setbacks across different school systems and age groups.
For children, these pressures are rarely articulated as “stress” or “anxiety”. Instead, they surface in simpler language: “I don’t want to go”, “What if I get it wrong?”, “What if they laugh?” These are not signs of weakness, but of children navigating expectations they are still learning how to name. When mistakes feel final rather than temporary, avoidance becomes a form of self-protection.
This is where resilience as a lived skill becomes essential. From a child’s perspective, resilience is not toughness or confidence. It is the belief that a mistake will not define them, that discomfort will pass and that trying again is safe. Without repeated exposure to manageable difficulty, this understanding cannot fully develop.
Research from Harvard’s Centre on the Developing Child shows that the strongest predictor of resilience is the presence of one stable, supportive adult in a child’s life. This relationship acts as an emotional anchor, helping children process challenges and regulate stress. When support is replaced by constant protection rather than guidance, children are left with fewer opportunities to develop the emotional tools needed to manage setbacks independently.
Without resilience, minor difficulties can feel overwhelming. A forgotten homework assignment becomes a source of distress. A disagreement with peers turns into a crisis. A lower grade feels defining rather than temporary. Over time, children may withdraw, avoid new experiences or fear making mistakes, limiting emotional growth during formative years.
Schools in the UAE are increasingly prioritising well-being. While resilience is not taught as a standalone subject, its elements appear in social and emotional learning programmes and life-skills initiatives. Research from Casel, an organisation that promotes social and emotional learning in schools, shows that such programmes support emotional regulation and academic engagement.
At the national level, the UAE has taken meaningful steps to embed well-being into childhood development. The National Policy for the Promotion of Mental Health and the National Strategy for Well-being 2031 place children’s emotional health among national priorities. Dubai’s Student Well-being Census further supports schools through data-led intervention, according to the emirate’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority.
What is less clearly articulated, however, is resilience as a distinct developmental focus. While well-being and mental health have rightly received growing attention across schools, community programmes and national policy frameworks, resilience is often embedded within broader agendas rather than examined on its own. Bringing greater clarity to how resilience is understood, supported and assessed could help ensure that efforts aimed at children’s well-being translate into long-term emotional strength, rather than short-term emotional relief.
Still, resilience cannot be built by institutions alone. Parents remain central, even as the demands of work and family life continue to grow. The challenge is no longer whether we care enough, but whether our care leaves room for children to struggle and recover on their own.
Too often, discomfort is treated as something to be eliminated immediately. Frustration is softened, mistakes are pre-empted and disappointment is quickly rescued. Yet in removing these moments, we also remove the practice of resilience. Children are not learning that difficulty passes, only that it should be avoided.
The concern, therefore, is not that children are loved too much, but that they are protected from precisely the experiences that teach emotional strength. Resilience does not emerge from comfort alone. It is built through exposure to challenge, with support close enough to guide but not so close that it replaces the child’s own effort.
We may not be able to control the world our children inherit. But if childhood becomes a space where discomfort is consistently removed, we should not be surprised when resilience struggles to take root. In an age defined by comfort and speed, making room for challenge may be one of the most deliberate and necessary choices we make.
