Building Resilience in Children

Resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ after challenges and tough times. For children, challenges and tough times include experiences like starting at a new school or kindergarten, moving house, or welcoming a sibling into the family. They can also include serious experiences like being bullied, family breakdown, family illness and many more things.

Children build resilience over time through experience. We can help our children learn skills and develop resilience by having a warm, supportive relationship with them. There are many ways to teach the child to be resilient throughout their growing years. Here are some of the ways by which we as adults can teach our children right from toddlers to be resilient.

Building a strong Family bond: It is very important to make your child right from a very young age to develop a strong bond with all the family members. The whole family plays an important role in building the child’s confidence. Each family member’s contribution is important for the child’s growth. Encourage them to interact with all the members of the family by often taking them to the family gatherings or involve them in interactions. Having a stronger bond with the extended family helps the child face the challenges and become resilient.

Building self confidence– Children develop self confidence by being independent in all their work. Empowering them by being a guide to our children right from childhood helps them become confident and develop self confidence. Letting them face all the little challenges like getting up on their own when they fall, helping them eat on their own and choosing their dress for the day can boost their self worth and make them face the other challenges later in a better way. Helping them in self care goes a long way in building self confidence and learning to become resilient. 

Celebrating small victories– The children should be taught to celebrate small victories. We should teach them the importance of feeling the sense of accomplishment in the smallest of small tasks like completing an assignment or doing a small chore on their own. Even if it’s not perfect, teach them to feel proud of themselves when they complete a given task. This will definitely help them feel more confident to face any challenges and slowly help them improve the skills of doing things on their own and when faced with challenges at school, they are more resilient

Teach them to be positive and show gratitude– Teaching children to be positive and grateful helps them appreciate little things in life. Showing gratitude for any help received from others and being thankful helps them build a strong personality and improve self worth. Positive attitude towards peers helps them grow a good understanding in tackling situations and building resilience when they face challenges in life.

Teach children to reset the goals– The children should know to change goals as they grow older and teach them to be more resilient to changes in life. We need to teach the children to face failures in a positive way and help them make changes accordingly. This habit not only helps the children to reset the goals and move on quickly but learn to bounce back and learn to cope with problems in a positive mindset. 

Create challenging situations– Creating a few hypothetical scenarios for the kids to tackle the problem is very important. This definitely helps the kids face the challenges right from childhood to adulthood in a better way. It prepares them to face the worst situations in life and be resilient whenever faced with tough situations and creates opportunities for the children to know their strengths and also face them. In case of failure, they would definitely be more brave and learn to be more resilient. 

Written by: Roopa De