As parents, it is our natural instinct to protect our kids from being hurt. To want to help them avoid the challenges or traumas that we may have experienced in life. But what if I said this might not be the best thing for our child’s growth and learning…. And more importantly, their resilience to walk through life’s ups and downs.
Resilience is our ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. If we fall, we need to learn how to get back up again. But if we have never fallen before, then how do we learn how to rise again. If someone has always picked us up, how do we pick ourselves up. Our best teacher for life’s challenges is experience and our job is to provide a loving environment for our child’s experience.
Brene Brown (a research professor of social work and famous author) talks about courageous parenting. Her research shows that resilient people believe that they are worthy of love and belonging. As a parent, it is our job to build that belief in our children (and also in ourselves). Brene Brown (Daring Greatly, 2012) also wrote the most vulnerable and bravest thing a parent can do in their efforts to raise wholehearted children is to let “their children struggle and experience adversity”.
If we are constantly navigating our kids to succeed and to avoid failure, then our kids can lose a very important life skill; that is to have the courage to get back up. As a parent we need the courage to just hold space for our child when they fall, fail or struggle. It’s not to try and fix it for them. If we can be with them, in their struggle, we show the child love and support… and that they belong. However, if we try to fix their experience, our message to them is it’s not okay to feel these uncomfortable feelings and ultimately you are not okay. By fixing things we are also showing our child that they aren’t capable of going through these experiences without us.
When we hold the space and just be there for our kids, we can teach them how to feel the uncomfortable emotions of struggle, disappointment or failure (which they may not master immediately). They are learning that it is okay to feel these feelings and that they are very normal. Our kids are given the gift of learning what to do or feel when they have been knocked down. In this space we can ask questions that may instigate problem solving or possibly acceptance/allowance. But a really important lesson of turning their defeated energy into determined energy. “I can try again” and “I will be okay”. Through the process of struggle the child learns the concept of hope! That is, even when things are difficult I can come through the other side, things will change. So, to raise resilient children who can develop high levels of hopefulness, we have to let them struggle and fall down.
When we watch our child shift their energy, it’s at that point we praise them for their resilience and reflect with them how they shifted through this struggle. This experience can be stored in our child’s memory for next time and provides them with a sense of capability and hope.
We can build resilience in our kids by;
- Supporting your child, but don’t try to solve every minor problem or disappointment.
- Avoid predicting and preventing problems for your child.
- Help your child to identify, feel and manage strong emotions.
- Encourage your child to have another go when things don’t work out. Praise for trying and effort.
- Build your child’s self-compassion. It’s okay to make mistakes.
- Make it a habit for them to recognise and acknowledge when things are going well. Gratefulness.
- Emotions are normal and they shift.
- Help them to develop problem solving skills.
- Build their independence.
- Build confidence by taking on personal challenges.
- Accepting circumstances that cannot be changed – this takes time.
- To identify with the survivor, as opposed to the victim.