Tips to help your child be strong in the face of obstacles
Stress & Resilience
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from stress, difficult situations, failure, or even trauma. All children are capable of working through challenges and coping with stress. It’s not something that kids either have or don’t have; it’s a skill that develops as they grow. All kids encounter varying degrees of stress as they grow. Despite their best efforts, parents can’t protect kids from obstacles. Kids get sick, move to new neighborhoods, have friendship drama, stress over taking tests, and deal with changes within the family, to name a few. Resilience helps kids navigate these stressful situations. When kids have the skills and the confidence to work through their problems, they learn that they have what it takes to confront difficult issues. The more they bounce back on their own, the more they realize they are strong and capable. Resilient kids are more likely to take healthy risks because they don’t fear failure. They are curious, brave, and trusting of their instincts. They know their limits and they push themselves outside of their comfort zones. This helps them reach for their goals and solve problems independently.
Help your child build resilience in the face of obstacles including moving, divorce, and anxiety with these tips:
1. Build a Strong Emotional Connection
Kids develop coping skills when they feel safe, so it’s important to spend one-on-one time with them. This means you need to put down the smart phone and focus on your child. When kids know they have the unconditional support of a parent, family member, or even a teacher, they feel empowered to seek guidance and make attempts to work through difficult situations. Positive connections allow adults to model coping and problem-solving skills to children.
2. Promote Healthy Risk-Taking
It’s important to encourage kids to take healthy risks. What’s a healthy risk? Something that pushes a child to go outside of their comfort zone, but results in very little harm- even if they are unsuccessful. Examples include trying a new sport, participating in the school play, or striking up a conversation with a shy peer. When kids avoid risk, they internalize the message that they aren’t strong enough to handle challenges. When kids embrace risks, they learn to push themselves.
3. Resist the Urge to Fix It and Teach Problem Solving skills
Parents can help build resilience by teaching kids to solve problems independently. While your gut reaction might be to jump in and help so that the child avoids dealing with discomfort, this actually weakens resilience. By bouncing the problem back to the child with questions, the parent helps the child think through the issue, learn how to work through it and develop their own problem-solving skills. The goal is not to promote rugged self-reliance. We all need help sometimes, and it’s important for kids to know they have help. By brainstorming solutions with kids, parents engage in the process of solving problems. Encourage kids to come up with a list of ideas and weigh the pros and cons of each one.