Learning to Ride Life’s Rollercoaster

Things won’t always go as planned. Sometimes they’ll go really well, other times they’ll fall apart completely. Life has a way of throwing curveballs when you least expect them. The lesson I hope sticks with my kids is: you don’t need to control the ride, but you just need to learn how to ride it.

I talk to my kids a lot about life being a rollercoaster. There are highs that make your stomach flip in the best way, and drops that take your breath away. You don’t get to vote on every turn, but you do get to decide how you respond when things feel fast, scary, or out of control.

Resilience isn’t about pretending things don’t hurt or acting like everything’s fine, it’s about staying flexible when plans change, and taking a breath instead of panicking. It’s about learning to pause, think logically, and ask, “what’s the next best step?”

I want my kids to know that staying calm doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you’re giving yourself space to figure things out. When emotions run high, it’s easy to spiral and assume the worst or give up entirely.

But resilience lives in that small moment between reaction and response. That’s where you regain control.

And positivity doesn’t mean forced optimism. It doesn’t mean slapping a smile on something that feels hard. It means choosing to believe that even when things go wrong, there’s still a way forward. A belief that those problems can be solved. That setbacks don’t define you. That you’re capable, even when things feel messy.

This is a lesson adults need just as much as kids. We often get thrown off course.. Plans change. Things break. People disappoint us. And when that happens, our kids are watching how we handle it. Do we melt down? Do we blame? Or do we adapt, problem-solve, and keep going?

I want my kids to grow into people who can bend without breaking.
Who know that hard moments aren’t the end and will trust themselves to handle whatever comes next.