Teaching resilience to kids is a task centering kids’ phyisical well-being, emotional health, learning, and the ability to handle the challenges in life. The biggest struggle that parents face in teaching resilience is the fact that it can be learned the hard way. Resilience is built by doing and experiencing. With parents constantly stepping in and taking lead, kids are missing the opportunity to learn this important life skill.
What is Resilience for Kids?
Resilience is the ability to recover from failures and difficulty quickly. It is the willingness to try challenging things. If kids are able to recover from setbacks quickly, they probably are able to take more risks. When they take more risks, fall, and bounce back, they learn how to be resilient.
Children can acquire this skill early in their life. Teachers and parents play an important role in teaching resilience to kids.
Raising Resilience to Kids at Home
The first step to raising resilience to kids is to start with a safety net. With the right safety in place, kids can stretch themselves to experience and handle the hard things. This helps in fostering strong trust and attachment.
Here are 4 ways to raise a resilient child:
- Teach them the difference between Need and Want
Kids are often caught in their small world, thinking they need to do something a certain way. It is important to guide your child out of their comfort zone. For example, they need to sleep, but they want a certain soft toy. Challenge the kids to do things out of their comfort zone. Start by taking small steps. Let them realise how strong they are on their own, and they don’t actually ‘need’ any of the perceived needs.
- Let them take risk
Your kid may want to do something that you believe is doomed to failure. Let them try, and take risks. You can set a few ground rules, though. For example, if your child wants to try a new sport, tell him/her to commit to finishing out the whole term. Also, challenge your child to do things that can teach important life skills. Before learning to drive a car, he/she must learn traffic rules, how to cross a street, and pay attention to the traffic flow.
If your child wants to quit, help them find a better solution by being a good coach, and not a problem solver.
- Be a Resilient Coach
To be a resilient kid, your child needs a resilient coach. Teach your child problem solving and critical thinking skills. These skills can help children face any kind of challenges, even when you are not around. At Kids’ Resilience we have the tools and resources to help you get there.
- Help in Developing Emotional Engagement
Emotional engagement, is the ability to understand and relate to others. Mastering our emotions and building empathy is something that needs to be developed throughout childhood, teen years, and adulthood.
Raising a resilient kid will not happen overnight. It is a continuous parenting approach, involving taking some hard steps for your kid; a hard look at what we are teaching and modeling. Teaching resilience to kids doesn’t come easily. But it will only do wonders for your child, as it will teach resilience to the kid and help you build a toolbox of sound overall health practices.