What is resilience?
Resilience is the ability to bounce back when things feel hard. It’s about adjusting to challenges that can’t be avoided and still moving forward. Resilient people often take lessons from tough moments that help them grow. Every challenge is different, and it might be easier to bounce back from some better than from others.
Why is it important?
These days, many children experience constant emotional stimulation in a fast-paced world. Being able to develop emotional resilience at an early age allows children to navigate social challenges (e.g. at school) better, maintain a belief in themselves, and to have the ability to regulate emotions. Furthermore, they will be able to deal better with setbacks and remain flexible when they need to adapt to certain circumstances.
Instead of avoiding any unwanted feelings, children learn to move through them in a safe and maybe even productive way.
How can we as parents support building emotional resilience?
We can support children in building resilience by:
- Creating strong supportive relationships within the family, with relatives, friends, or within a community. These experiences give the child a sense of belonging and the feeling that they matter. These feelings also help building your child’s confidence and resilience.
We can as well prepare them with emotional and practical skills and with helpful thinking habits that can be applied when challenges arise. For example:
- Building self-compassion teaches children to respond to mistakes and disappointments with kindness rather than criticism. This supportive inner voice helps them process difficult experiences and keep going.
- Demonstrate your own ways of dealing with challenges, and surround your child with positive role models who show healthy ways of coping with difficulties. This could be an uncle who has experienced something similar at school as your child and is willing to share his coping strategies.
- Talk openly and acknowledge when somethings is not going well for your child. A common family strategy is to share one positive experience from the day during dinnertime.
- Don't try to prevent every problems for your child. If they are able to experience small disappointments, they will be better equipped to handle future challenges.
- Children learn resilience when they begin to see it in themselves. By reflecting on challenges they have faced in the past and managed successfully, they build confidence and a sense of capability.
Note: Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd credits her resilience to her upbringing and how her parents viewed 'failure'. Failure wasn't seen as a negative outcome, but as a 'marker of success' because it meant you had the courage to try. This mindset allowed her to learn how to pursue goals and to overcome difficult challenges.
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