Resilience lessons from an (almost) 13 Year Old

Next week is my youngest son’s barmitzvah. For anyone unfamiliar, a barmitzvah is when a Jewish boy officially becomes a man. They read from the Torah (Hebrew bible) in synagogue and there is often a big party for friends and family afterwards to celebrate. It’s a pretty big deal.

The synagogue part is something that can take a year or more to learn. It can be very long and is usually sung, so there are notes to learn too. The barmitzvah boy will typically read a bit at the end of the Torah portion and then another, longer bit from the books of the Prophets, known as the Haftorah.

Just 3 weeks ago, we learnt, purely by chance, that my son had very unfortunately been taught the wrong Haftorah. Not slightly wrong. Not a few misplaced notes. The entirely wrong one. All 39 verses of it.

In a scene you might only hear of in a movie, it was only when he decided to randomly sing some of his Haftorah during a lesson in school, that another boy who happens to have his barmitzvah on the same day asked what he was singing and they discovered that something had clearly gone wrong for one of them, as it was not the same. That they were only sat near each other because my son had been moved there for talking was just another twist in the tale. We spent that evening investigating and the truth became clear.

By this point, he had been having lessons for 13 months and practicing with his dad in between. He had shown up (mostly) consistently, even on the days he really didn’t want to. And then, when he thought he had finished learning and there was no more stress, we had to tell him that was no longer the case. Figuring out how to tell him was a discussion that went on long into the night.

Watching his little face fall as the reality hit was awful. There was some serious panic as he realised that at this point, there were only 5 weeks to go. The task felt enormous. It would have been easy to give up, or take the option of just doing the shorter (correct) bit or even doing the incorrect Haftorah and letting someone else do the correct one. But he wasn’t having any of that.

Instead, after a few tears, some totally understandable “this isn’t fair / why has this happened to me” self-pity, his actual words were, “well, I guess I’d better get on with learning the new one then”. And he has. Less than 2 weeks to go and he’s done it. It needs some polishing up, but he’s done it. Just him, his dad, a recording and some support from teachers. Legend.

He’s been relentlessly focused. He sings it in the shower, he practices it when he goes to bed (anything to delay sleeping) and he won’t stop until he’s perfected it. For a child to whom things come very naturally, this is maybe the first time in his life he has had to manage the discomfort of not yet being good at something. He has absolutely had moments of doubt, but he’s kept going and we could not be prouder.

As a therapist, I often sit with people in the moment when their “wrong Haftorah” appears. A diagnosis they didn’t expect, a relationship or friendship that ends, the job they don’t get, the version of life they thought they were building that suddenly looks different.

These are the moments that test us. Not because we aren’t strong, but because we are human. Resilience isn’t about pretending something isn’t hard. Resilience is having the capacity to experience the disappointment and still choose to take the next small step anyway.

What I witnessed in my son wasn’t just determination. It was full on resilience. He didn’t do it alone. He had his dad guiding him and everyone encouraging him. He had the space to be overwhelmed, but to know it was ok and we would figure it out one way or the other. He was allowed to wobble without anyone questioning his capability and that part is vital. Resilience thrives on connection. Knowing that if people believe in me, I can do it.

That is a part of my work that I love too. Helping people rebuild trust in their own capacity. Not by minimising what they’re facing, but by being alongside them while they face it. Because if there is one thing I am sure of it is that as humans, we are all capable of way more than we think, even if we aren’t even 13 yet.