- Stacy Modisette
- Jun 10, 2023
- 9 min read
Kids: Strength Comes from Within
Teach your kids to be resilient. Provide them with the tools to use in life they can use throughout their development to navigate life’s little ups and downs.
Resilience: The ability to recover quickly after a difficult experience.
But be careful, expecting to be resilient after facing some trauma can cause emotional harm.
Resilience is different for everyone, there are no set rules, and it’s not a one size fits all thing to be taught. It’s not something one can strive for. Instead, it’s more about teaching kids good coping strategies.
Self-esteem
self-efficacy
trust
Kindness
social skills
emotional regulation skills
adaptability
healthy relationships
relationship skills
coping skills
Research from 2011 and 2021 suggests that some people may be born with a certain degree of resilience through neurobiological processes and genetic underpinnings.
We need to teach our children productive ways to recognize their emotions and process those emotions in a healthy way. We all feel sadness, disappointment, and anger. But there are healthy ways to learn to deal with these emotions that will build resilience. We must teach our children to adapt to difficult situations. Think in a more positive way rather than a negative manner. Thinking more positively can create a healthier adaptive response.
Resilience can be defined as having the ability to adapt to challenges and changes throughout life. We all experience challenges and setbacks throughout life. Learning how to adapt to those at a young age will help them in adulthood to bounce back from challenges and setbacks.
Resilient children push forward and take more risks. They understand that even if they do not reach their initial goal the first time, they should keep pushing forward and keep trying. They are less likely to give up and throw in the towel if and when they fail at something. Likewise, they are more fearless and typically end up being more successful later in life.
Some children are just more resilient than others
Although some children may be more naturally resilient, it doesn’t mean that children with less resilience can’t learn to be more resilient. Plus, no matter how much resilience a child has, they can always develop more. Resilience is something that can be taught. It isn't taught like a math problem, but more like a life skill. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Resilience is in a manner a strength that can be learned.
Resilience can be learned through the way we think about things. When we teach our children to see things in a more positive manner, we are teaching them a form of resilience. Instead of allowing them to throw a fit and scream when they get mad, teach them deep breathing techniques. Deep breathing has a positive effect and releases chemicals in the brain that will help them relax and feel less angry or disappointed.
How they see themselves is also very important. Children often have low self-esteem by comparing themselves to others, especially the ones they watch on television. Teaching our children to see themselves as unique individuals with their own strengths and abilities can help increase self-esteem and build resilience.
Teach them to ask questions. Teaching a child to ask questions about situations can help them better understand a situation and then explain potential consequences. Most people think of consequences negatively; however, consequences can be good. If you have a book report, and you read the book, the consequence will be a good grade. Consistently using positive outcomes will help them think in a more positive manner as well.
Automatically thinking negatively can create negative outcomes; while, automatically thinking positively can create positive outcomes. Positive thinking is one strategy that can be used to work through difficult thoughts and emotions.
Besides using positive thinking, thinking about what we can do differently next time will help them learn to be more resilient as well. Okay, so that didn’t work, what will we do to change the outcome next time? There isn’t a scientist alive or in the past that ever had all experiments work out the first time. Maybe one or two sporadically, but never all. Through trial and error, we learn and we learn resilience.
Teaching kids to prepare for failure is another way to help them become more resilient. That does not mean telling your kids they will fail. That is negative talk. Teach them that in the case that something doesn’t quite turn out as they had hoped to think of it as a learning process. When they see their failures as a learning process, they are more likely to push forward and try again. Because we all know that throughout life there are times we fail at something. We are never good at everything we do. Kids need to realize that there will be times when they will fail at things. It’s what you do after that counts the most.
Children seem to feel more devastated, it’s the end of the world when things go wrong. Even a bad grade, an embarrassing moment, a breakup, a fight with a friend, etc. can all feel overwhelming.
Teaching our kids from a very early age can help them build more resilience to deal with those devastating things in their teenage lives. They will be able to more effectively cope with life’s challenges and learn to move forward even when they feel like they failed in some way and that their life is now over.
Children need to face challenges and learn the skills to persevere. We need to teach them to take their time on projects. Rushing through things can result in a higher failure rate. Teach them that by slowing down and focusing, they are more likely to succeed. Teach them that practice takes time. This will reduce stress and quiet that inner critic that says they aren’t good at something and are a failure.
Teaching resilience starts at home and builds trust, Teach with kindness and by example. Kids learn more by watching their parents and siblings than anyone else. Healthy attachments create resilience.
Although it may be difficult to allow your child to fail, it is one of the healthiest things a parent can do. We all want to protect our children. Instead, teach them to think critically and problem-solve. This will help them to adapt to different situations. They will learn how to improve themselves and help them become successful adults.
Consistently tell your child how proud you are of them. Point out the positive things they do and not their failures. When they do fail at something, point out the good points of the failure, and point out some things they could learn from the failure. Help them problem-solve on their own. Ask them what they think they could do to improve. Let them think about things on their own rather than telling them each time. This does not mean you should never explain to your child what they did wrong and how to improve, it just means to help them to learn how to do these things on their own.
Teach them to be kind to others, to have empathy for others, and try to see things from different points of view. When we look at things from different perspectives, we learn to be more resilient.
Kids today face challenges that we did not
We didn’t have things such as social media and online video games like kids do today. It may be different today than it was when we grew up. However, the challenges are basically still the same. Unfortunately, there may be more challenges for them than it was when we were growing up. Today, things can be posted immediately and bullying can be worse due to social media.
Also, online social media and constantly playing video games online prevent them from learning good face-to-face social skills. Children are often handed phones to play with at an early age. Instead of playing and talking to our children, many people sit them in front of a TV or hand them a digital device. This is not conducive to building resilience. Learning to live on a digital device from an early age could negatively impact their ability to develop healthy relationships in life outside the online world.
The online world does not teach social skills. If they disagree with someone, they can simply ignore it. For example, if they do not like a certain topic, they can “unfriend” that person or have that topic removed from their feed. They only discuss what they want or friend people with like ideas. There is no room for healthy debate, and the consequence is being unfriended or deleted. These are not good social skills, and it does not teach them that it is ok for some people to have different viewpoints and different ideas.
Teaching resilience
Because resilience is a learned skill, there are a few ways you can teach kids to process failure and move on. Kids can build mental elasticity and greater resilience by learning to recognize and work through their emotions.
Self-efficacy
When you believe you can achieve your goals or a desired outcome, you have self-efficacy. Believing in yourself helps develop resilience.
Allowing your child to believe in themselves may sound easy. However, this may be one of the most challenging things for a parent to overcome because it means allowing your child to make mistakes, be disappointed and even fail sometimes. They may need to make mistakes to learn how to problem-solve and eventually achieve their goals.
Small children should be allowed and encouraged to do things appropriate for their age that will teach them to make decisions for themselves and achieve a certain goal. For example, even cleaning can be used as an opportunity to teach them self-efficacy. Allowing them to put away clothes or towels or help with dusting or even cooking can help them achieve small goals. Putting on their shoes and even learning to tie their shoes may seem like a small thing, but to a child, it is a huge accomplishment.
As they age, allowing for more difficult opportunities will help them develop further. New skills, fundraising, joining a group or a cause they are interested in, and even teaching them agriculture and growing flowers or gardening can teach them self-efficacy.
Self-trust
When you rely on yourself and trust you can make the right decisions and reflect on your own personal integrity, you have good self-trust.
Teach them to prioritize, and manage their own stress and emotional needs. Teach them self-care, teach them that they need to take care of themselves and need to have time to themselves as well as social time. Self-trust also comes from achieving goals and learning to trust themselves and their decisions.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem refers to how you think and feel about yourself.
Self-esteem will develop naturally, similar to self-trust, as the child learns the consequences of achieving their goals. They will begin to understand that even when making mistakes, they can still achieve their goals.
Your child will learn self-esteem through clear communication and speaking to others in a respectable manner. Teaching your child that when they respect others, others will in turn respect them.
It is also very important to point out their accomplishments and how they achieved it. Let them know that you are proud of their hard work. Point out what it was that they did; such as study hard, working hard on a science project, such as gathering recourses and materials, doing research, etc. Let them know you are proud of them for how they treat others.
Kindness
Kindness is your desire to make someone else's life better, and understanding and thinking of others outside yourself. It’s the natural capacity to care about others. Most children are naturally kind in many ways; however, they have a tendency to be selfish. Teaching your child to consistently think of others' feelings and try to see other perspectives will help them learn to be kind on a regular basis. A 2021 study shows that children who better understand the perspectives of others have a larger capacity to forgive. Learning kindness and empathy can help them to learn to forgive others as well as forgive themselves.
Encourage random acts of kindness. They could help someone in the grocery store. If they see someone drop something, they can pick it up and hand it to them, help an elderly person put groceries in their car, etc. Encouraging them to volunteer for a cause that they’re passionate about will also help teach them kindness and empathy.
What to do in the face of trauma
Learning how to respond to life’s smaller challenges will help them with larger challenges and give them the capacity to face and overcome more severe traumatic events.
When we experience trauma, we respond and remember that experience. This affects the way we experience other similar experiences. When kids experience trauma, they may need to talk about their feelings and understand ways to help them cope.
When to seek help
If your child has experienced a severe traumatic event, it’s important to seek professional help from a medical or mental health professional. You can use the tools and suggestions in this article to help your child prepare for potential trauma and life’s general ups and downs. But if your child has already endured a traumatic event, seek professional help.
