How can I help my child become more resilient?

Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant

What is resilience and why is it important?

Resilience is the skill of ‘bouncing back’ when you come up against tricky times, challenges, or stress. It is not something that you do or don’t have, it is something which is learnt, practiced, and strengthened over time.  Our children have to learn resilience starting from a very young age and this is often developed (and experienced) through their play.

Resilience helps children to be more curious, adventurous, brave and able to trust their instincts.  Children need to experience ‘safe’ risk and have opportunities to challenge themselves and to go out of their comfort zones (which can often lead to us being out of ours too!).  We, of course, want to keep our children safe and never want them to come to any harm or be put in situations which can cause them worry or hurt.  However, if we don’t let them have the opportunity to try new things or, experiment with ideas, they are not going to be able to ‘work that resilience muscle’.  By having things not go as planned or to keep trying at something, builds resilience and in turn our child’s confidence, self-esteem and their ‘bounce back’ abilities. 

What can we do to help build resilience?

• Avoid jumping in.  We can be very quick to want to step in, help, protect or problem solve for our children but this can mean that they aren’t able to build strategies in order to cope with these situations as they get older.  This then leads to them feeling alone and not knowing what to do.  We can absolutely be there to support and guide them, but not to jump in with the solutions – work with them to guide them to the solution.  You can do this by asking questions such as:

• How will you…

  • get that to….balance?

  • get down? 

  • get across? 

• Who will…. help you?

• Where will you…

  • put your feet?

  • look next?

• What can you use to…

  • help you?

  • make that balance?

  • make that less tricky?

• Support emotionally.  Helping your child to understand their emotions and them knowing that talking about how they are feeling with you is normal and natural, will help your child feel able to explain how they are feeling in different situations.  If they can label the feeling such as nervous, worried, proud, excited, happy, sad etc this will help you to support them in ‘bouncing back’ from a situation or helping them to see how feeling proud, excited, happy etc can feel, which can be achieved by persevering, going out of their comfort zone etc.

• Mistakes are good.  This can be a really hard one for all of us to accept.  Making mistakes can make us feel like we have failed or that we are not good at something.  We don’t want our children to have this view as this can stop them from continuing to try at something.  Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in front of your child, let them see that you do (you are your child’s greatest role model) and then talk to them about how you are going to fix it or continue to try until you have mastered it.  The power of ‘yet’ can be hugely powerful in this context “I can’t make this work yet”, “I haven’t learnt how to do this yet”.  It is important that we watch our reaction to when our children make mistakes, they need to feel that they can make a mistake and that you are there to support rather than criticise.  This can be really hard not to do (especially if it feels like they should have known better), but if a child feels that each time they make a mistake there will be judgement this can stop them wanting to try again or lead them to hide what they have done or how they are feeling so as to avoid the situation with the adults around them.  Giving the message that mistakes are fine to make and you are there to support them can lead to your child making more sensible decisions and also feel that they are able to give something another go and not give up. 

• Provide opportunities for safe healthy risk taking. Risk doesn’t always feel like it can be healthy or safe, but without opportunity for this our children are not able to experience the feeling of elation which they get from achieving something they didn’t think they could do or the sense of achievement from trying something out of their comfort zone.  If we don’t allow for our children to try things such as climbing that little bit higher or going a little faster on their bike, or even for our babies to attempt to pull themselves up etc., then we are giving the message that they can’t do it or they are not capable to try to do.  We need to be there to support and guide (along with ensuring they are safe) but we want them to embrace risk and challenge so that they learn to push themselves in lots of different aspects of their lives as they grow up. Try to avoid the phrase ‘be careful’ and look to change how you approach the situation to see if you need to say anything at all or if you need to help them to problem solve.  If they need your help then the next points are ones to consider.

• Help them to problem solve As mentioned earlier we can often want to step in and ‘solve’ things for our children, but the skill of problem solving is one which is essential throughout life.  Asking questions which help to problem solve (as mentioned above) are more beneficial than just stepping in.  

• Promoting with our children that asking for help is not a negative thing.  We often don’t ask for help in fear of judgement that we should know the answer or should be able to do the task, however there are times when we need others to help and asking for help is ok!

• Provide coping strategies. These can be strategies which your child is able to draw on when they are feeling nervous, worried, scared or even excited or overwhelmed.  This can be things such as breathing techniques, slowing down and just thinking about the situation before jumping in, looking at the situation from different perspectives to see if there is another way etc.  We need to embrace the idea that our children will come up against challenges and we will not always be there to help. Having strategies which are learnt from a young age will help them in the long term and even into adulthood.

• Encourage your child to help others.  Having opportunities to support other children can help your child learn about supporting and guiding. For example, this might be through play and a child needing help to build a tower.  If your child is a capable tower builder, then encouraging them to help the other child not only helps the other child but also helps your child have a sense of achievement in providing their help and using their skills.

• Always find the positives. As human beings we are predisposed to look for the negatives before the positives so it can take some more effort to find the positives in challenging situations, but they are there if we look, and we want our children to be able to do this. 

• Getting out and about. Being outside in the fresh air can really help with our emotional health and wellbeing, which in turn helps with our ability to problem solve and be resilient…this is the same for our children. Getting outside can really help.  

• Self Care. Teaching our children about self-care is important this, again, will help them throughout life. Eating well, getting good amount of sleep, doing things they enjoy etc.  If they are able to take time for themselves and know what makes them feel good about themselves this will help them when they face more tricky or challenging times.  Self-care can really help with the ‘bounce back’.

• Teaching patience.  Having to wait for something or know that we don’t always get what we want straight away can be hugely beneficial for building resilience.  

You are your child’s role model and showing your resilience will not only help your child see what this looks like, but also help them to pick up the skills to use themselves.  Even as adults we are still ‘working our resilience muscle’ - some days we can be better than others and some situations really need us to work more on it.  We can also draw on the strategies mentioned above - they can help us as much as our children! 

There are some great books on this topic - some that we recommend are here

While you are here we have lots more blogs on various topics which you can find here, as well as our downloadable webinars on topics such as behaviour and emotions, sleep and toilet training.

Don’t forget that we offer parent consultations should you need support with anything from sleep to behaviour and so much more! Details of the packages we offer can be found here.

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