Support Resilience in Children

Resilience: the ability to adapt well to adversity

Life comes with stress, both positive and negative. Children who are optimistic, who are given responsibilities they are capable of, who try even if they fail, who feel good about who they are, who understand their own feelings and who can interpret they way others are feeling are likely to display resilience under stress.
Resilience is not a trait some people are born with and others are not. Resilience is a set of skills that can be built and there is a spectrum of resilience. All people have some level of resilience, but those higher on the spectrum will fare better under stress than those lower on the spectrum. Some children will be lower on the spectrum and need help developing the assets that support resiliency, but even children higher on the resilience spectrum can benefit from continually strengthening their assets.

Many assets feed into creating resiliency in children. So far, we have tried to provide information on how to develop each of the assets in previous blog posts:

1. Responsibility "Giving Kids More Responsibility" 
2. Optimism "Teach Children Optimism"
3. Competence "Children Need to Feel Important"
4. Emotional Intelligence "Acknowledge Children's Feelings"
5. Perseverance "Set Goals to Develop Perseverance"
6. Self-Esteem "Praise and Rewards"

As adults, we need to model the behaviors we want to see in children. 

Strengthening your own resilience can help improve your role as a parent- by strengthening the strategies we use when stressed, whether related to parenting or other aspects of life that spill over into our parenting roles. 

How resilient are you? Take a quiz and find your areas of strength and weakness.