Resilience – invisible armour

Teaching values based on the Christian concept of humanity

by Gilla Frank*

(24 October 2025) The conditions under which children grow up today are extremely challenging. Increasing relativism in values, the loss of religious and family ties, digital “co-educators” and the educational crisis in many schools point to the causes of this aberrant development. However, we parents can do a lot and have not only the right but also the duty to protect our children’s souls. But how can we protect them from contemporary trends associated with value relativism, identity diffusion and susceptibility to addiction?

If we want to strengthen them without putting them under a glass dome, we must make them resilient. But what exactly does that mean? It is easy to look up that “being resilient” means having a strong mental “immune system” that not only makes it easier to cope with crises but also allows one to emerge from them stronger. Resilient people are rooted in a bond-oriented environment and go through life with an optimistic attitude. Who wouldn’t want that for their children?

At a deeper level, resilience or mental strength is an attitude of the heart that can be learned and that leads to the formation of free will. This is a lifelong process that can succeed based on a sound personality development and a family background that could be described as a lived family culture. These families still exist, strong and resilient in the face of an unfortunate zeitgeist.

Christine de Marcellus Vollmer, mother of seven children and president of the Latin American Alliance for the Family, recognised the problems faced by young people due to the breakdown of families and the removal of boundaries in a permissive world more than 40 years ago and initiated the international values education programme “alive to the world” (www.alivetotheworld.org).

The books in this programme are based on research and experience gathered by a team of teachers, psychologists and social scientists – they were developed in collaboration with parents, children and young people of the respective age groups. Relevant findings from anthropology, brain research and educational science were considered, as was positive psychology with its rejection of deficit orientation and the development of character strengths (leadership ability through so-called “soft skills”). Walter Mischel’s research on self-control (the “marshmallow or Stanford experiment”) was also incorporated: children who have learned not to get everything immediately have a significantly higher tolerance for frustration later in life and are more productive.

Among the great ideas of human transcendence that give our children a deeper understanding of what it means to be human are the works of Viktor Frankl and John Paul II, whose insights have also been incorporated into the learning programme. Neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl developed a concept known as logotherapy, which could be described as the orientation of the person towards the meaning of life and values. Through his experiences in Auschwitz, he came to the realisation that whatever suffering life brings, it can be overcome if one knows what one is living for – and is aware of the “last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. This makes him one of the pioneers of resilience research, even though the term was not yet known at the time.

While Viktor Frankl focused on his work as a psychiatrist, Pope John Paul II laid the foundations for a Christian anthropology of love. In his series of catechesis on the “Theology of the Body”, he interprets the human capacity for love as a gift that leads people from the “I” to the “you”, to a dimension of love that seeks the highest good of others. His modern, holistic interpretation of the Christian view of humanity offers a positive view of love and physicality and is a foundation of value-oriented sex education within the book series.

The research outlined here led to the development of a “pedagogy of integrated personality”, which has become the basis of “alive to the world”: The book series offers a holistic education that values the physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of children and promotes the development of a mature personality.

Although today’s educational programmes invest heavily in cognitive strengths, these must remain ineffective if they lack an emotional and spiritual component. The foundation for this undoubtedly lies in a loving, warm-hearted home with a bond-oriented attitude to life. Parents simply must have time for their children. This allows basic trust to develop, enabling the child to grow into life with a positive attitude.

Parents are a spiritual authority for their children, which they can and should use in the best possible way. While cognitive and emotional strengths are best fostered in a good school environment, the question of religiosity and spiritual orientation is primarily a question of the parental home in the narrower sense or family culture in the broader sense. This is where faith, love and hope can grow.

Our books can be a valuable companion in this process – comprehensive, age-appropriate, repetitive and accompanying children from the 1st to the 13th school year; they also invite families to browse, read and discuss together. Parents can read a little bit every evening with their young children and help them recognise and grasp their own identity in the context of family, friends and society. With young people, we can stimulate conversations based on the stories told in the books about the universal and timeless “big ideas” of human history, on whose shoulders we stand.

So, let’s make the most of the time we have with our children. If we reach them on an emotional level, we have the best chance of equipping them for a successful life!

* Gilla Frank, Chairwoman of wertevollwachsen e.V.  (www.wertevollwachsen.de) The association wertevollwachsen e.V. was founded in 2015 to implement the international values education programme “alive to the world” in German-speaking countries.

(Translation “Swiss-Standpoint”)