Helping Your Child Be REsilient
This post is near and dear to my heart lately, as my own family has experienced a lot of challenges in a short amount of time, and I’m reminded of these below strategies as we all navigate life through these difficult times.
What Is Resilience and Why Do We Need It?
Resilience can be defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulties; to be able to strengthen ourselves when faced with adversity. Why do we need it? As a species if we weren’t resilient then we wouldn’t be alive; it’s as simple as that! In order to bounce back when life doesn’t go our way, when we experience illness, injury, failures and other things outside of our control, resilience is required to build strength and navigate these challenges.
How Do We Build Resilience?
Your child experiences many things which can bring on stress, especially in our ever-changing world. From increased screen time and social media demands, navigating conflict and relationships with peers and romantic partners as they get older, experiencing environmental factors and family tension, it is not uncommon to have stress in our lives. Parents face increasingly challenging times in not only understanding their child’s stresses and problems, but also in wondering how to help their child overcome these challenges and be resilient in the face of adversity. Parents often ask themselves, “How do I build my child’s ability to get through difficult times?” or “How do I help my child without doing things for them?” “How do I ensure they have the tools they need to navigate not only childhood and adolescence but also adulthood?” Here are a couple ideas in increasing your child’s capacity for resilience.
Reframe the Problem with Growth Mindset
One of the best ways we can teach our children about resilience is to help them learn from their problems rather than focus on them or focussing on “fixing things” for them. Shifting from a problem-focused perspective to a solution-focused one, is reframing and using this reframe can fall in line with a growth mindset. A growth mindset can be practiced by asking yourself or having your child ask themselves “what can I learn from this?” “What am I missing here?” “Is this an opportunity to build a new skill?” “IS this an opportunity to try things again differently?” By reflecting in this way, the problem looks less like a failure and more like a challenge to overcome. It empowers them to also realize they may have more control over the situation than they originally thought. It encourages them to look for solutions instead of focusing on the problem just not being there.
Avoid “Lawn-Mowing”
No matter what kind of parent you are, children will all eventually experience some type of problem. As parents, we can be quick to jump in when we see our child struggling or experiencing sadness, hurt or frustration. Our intentions are good as we don’t want to see them upset, hurt or in pain. However when we “rescue them” or “lawn-mow” over their problems, it interrupts the opportunity to solve things on their own or with our help to build resilience.
It’s not your job to remove or resolve ALL of you child’s problems. In fact, that is the very reason why children and adults will struggle with resilience as they get older, as they relied on others to solve their problems and lack the skills to navigate them on their own. Instead, we want to support, coach and guide them to find ways through their problems. We aren’t going to abandon them but we do need to let them struggle a bit and with our guidance they can develop the skills of resiliency.
Whether it is a four-year-old child experiencing the problem of spilling something , the eight-year-old child whose friend doesn’t want to play with them, or the teenager who forgot to do their homework, these problems are opportunities for them to learn the skills of resilience.
The term “lawn mower” parent comes from “mowing over” the problems in our child’s way and thus removing the opportunity for learning and growth. Cleaning up the four year old’s mess they made, calling the eight year old’s friends’s parents to ask why their child doesn’t want to play with ours, or simply doing our teenager’s homework for them are all examples of what happen when we get in the way of our children learning important resiliency (and accountability) skills.
Coach and Scaffold Your Children
We can certainly coach our children and not leave them high and dry in these situations: reflecting with the four year old what they need to clean up the mess and offering to help them, practicing with the eight year old things they can ask their friend directly, or allowing our teen to hand in a late assignment and having a conversation with them on how to plan differently for the next time are all examples of how you as a parent can empower your children to get stronger at being resilient in the face of problems.
Yes, there are learning steps involved to take your child from being dependent on you to resolve their issues to the being dependent on themselves. This is where scaffolding comes into play. It’s the idea of doing for, modelling, coaching, doing with and then once mastery is reached, them doing for themselves. Breaking anything down into a few different steps towards gradual independence is the key! Teaching someone a skill takes time and patience and this is potentially a long-term approach that you will cash in towards the end of your child’s journey, not an immediate fix.
Teach Acceptance of Problems
Many of us look at problems as hurdles to get through and only THEN will our lives improve. “If only X happens/stops then I will be happy and satisfied.” The concern with this type of thinking is that there will always be a new problem that pops up once the previous one is resolved. Yes, we can have goals and dreams, but when we put our happiness into things we may not be able to control or keep out of our lives, then it can set us up for failure. Our children listen and learn from us and start to believe the flawed “If only” statements and subsequently that they should be able to avoid problems from occurring or focussed on a “checklist” that will make them happy. Research shows that even when we solve a problem, our mind will adjust to our new norm, and then begin to once again look for problems. If we start to change the way we look at problems, we can learn to live with the problems in our lives, sometimes doing nothing and they will resolve, sometimes needing to put energy into resolving them, or often times coping with unsolvable problems that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. That frees us from living in the future and accepting the present and where we are right now. The reality is we can tell ourselves we need something to be happy, and make ourselves believe this, but there is happiness in every day that we can find if we look for it. Lastly, if money solved all problems, then the rich wouldn’t have any, and we simply know that isn’t true. Accepting that problems are a part of life means when they do happen, your kids have the skills to navigate they and they actually don’t feel as big either!
Practice Positivity and Gratitude
If we are constantly dwelling on the negatives, we will continue to focus on the negatives. If we look for the positives, we will start to see and feel more positively about our problems. It is human nature to focus on the negatives, it’s how our brains are wired. We are looking for danger and trying to avoid it by focusing on it. It doesn’t necessarily serve us well though in the 21st century and we are in a constant fight on what part of our brain is going to win: the primal more “survival” focussed part or the newer and adaptive “thriving” part.
Supporting our children in being positive can be easily achieved by using a gratitude journal, app, jar or verbal activity at the beginning or end of a day or week can help promote more gratitude and more positive thinking and resilience.
Being purposeful in planning something each day that helps you and your child to identify the positive can help to rewire our brains and see the good in otherwise negative situations, thereby increasing resiliency. It also takes 3 positive thoughts or experiences to counteract 1 negative thought or experience; that is how “sticky” our brains are. Keep this in mind when navigating the day to day and how you have the power to model these practices in action for and with your children.
It’s never too late to start any of these tips and tricks and the earlier you do start the better! Children’s brains are rapidly changing and organizing information as it comes; deciding what’s important or not. If you solidify some of these things with them before they enter adulthood, the better the chance of it shaping their brains in an important and long-lasting way!