Beyond ‘I Am Fine’: Helping Adolescents Build Emotional Resilience

"How are you?" I asked a class of forty students. In perfect unison, they replied, "I am fine."

I smiled. "It is good to know you all feel the same."

A hand went up. "Ma'am, it is not that we all feel the same. We have just been taught to say 'I am fine' whenever someone asks, 'How are you?'"

That moment stayed with me. Because behind the rehearsed response was a quiet truth: our adolescents are not always fine, but they are rarely given the space to say otherwise.

In a world that feels constantly shifting, with conflicts between countries, rising tensions in communities, and uncertainty in the air, adolescents are absorbing more than we think. The noise may not always reach them directly, but the vibrations do. Anxiety trickles in through overheard news reports, fearful conversations, and a constant sense that something is not quite right. And yet, when we ask them how they are, we expect the same answer: "I am fine."

But what if they are not? What if a child is quietly carrying the fear of violence? What if they have watched their parents argue about what is happening in the world? What if they are trying to understand why some of their friends are no longer coming to school or why grown-ups seem more distracted, more tense? This is not just about emotional vocabulary. It is about emotional survival. At a time like this, teaching adolescents to express their emotions is not a luxury, it is a lifeline.

At Magic Bus, we believe that before we bring in anything else, building trust and creating an emotionally safe space is more important than anything. Our sessions are designed to offer experiences where adolescents feel secure enough to share their deepest stories. They open up, articulate, express themselves, and feel supported among peers.

Sometimes, what young people need most is simply a voice, the reassurance that they are loved, that they are safe, and that they have a support system where their thoughts matter.

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Because a child who can say, "I feel scared," is already far safer than one who only knows how to say, "I am fine."

In our sessions, adolescents have used visual metaphors to explore emotions, like a volcano showing how anger erupts from buried feelings, or an iceberg revealing the quieter emotions beneath "I am fine." These simple drawings say what words often cannot.

My senior, Dr. Preetha Bhakta, Director - Programme Design & Development (Learning & Future Skills) often says, "The playground is the child's first laboratory of emotions. It is where they learn to win with humility, lose with dignity, and bounce back with resilience." I could not agree more. So let me hand it over to her to share how sports becomes a strategy for building emotional resilience.

Sports is far more than a game. It is the training ground for life itself. On the playground, children encounter their first lessons in winning, losing, collaboration, and conflict. Every missed goal, every comeback, and every shared victory teaches them to regulate emotions, manage setbacks, and find motivation to try again. Unlike textbooks, sports offer immediate, lived experiences of resilience and grit.

These lessons shape a mindset that does not just belong to the field but extends into classrooms, workplaces, and personal relationships. In this way, sports become a lifelong source of emotional strength, helping young people grow into adults who can navigate challenges with confidence and optimism. In short, for me, the playground is the child's very first laboratory of emotions. It is where they learn to win with humility, lose with dignity, and bounce back with resilience.

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So what can we do?

• Ask differently. Instead of "How are you?" try "What are you feeling today?" or "What was the hardest part of your day?"
• Listen without fixing. Sometimes adolescents do not need solutions. They need presence.
• Make space for emotion. Through art, movement, stories, and silence, let adolescents express in the way they know best.
• Model vulnerability. When adults share their real feelings (in age-appropriate ways), adolescents learn it is acceptable to do the same.Our adolescents are growing up in uncertain times. But if we can teach them to navigate the storm within, they may be better equipped to face the storms outside. Let us not wait for them to say, "I am fine." Let us teach them to say what they really feel and trust that we will listen.

Of course, emotions do not only surface in quiet moments of reflection or while drawing storms on paper. They also erupt in the middle of a game, when a goal is missed, a teammate makes a mistake, or the match feels unfair. That is why, at Magic Bus, we use sports as another powerful strategy to help adolescents recognize, express, and manage their emotions.