Three Easy Steps to Build Your Child’s Emotional Resilience
Resilience is an attribute that most parents desire for their children. In simple words, resilience is sort of like a tough exterior that some individuals have which allows them to handle and deal with stressful situations with confidence and ease. This quality ensures that a person can easily adapt to change and overcome life’s difficulties. Emotional resilience is something that can gradually develop as a person grows older and is faced with different obstacles in their lives. Therefore, resilience is something that comes with experience. However, how does one build emotional resilience from a young age? The insufficient amount of exposure to different facets of life might make it more difficult for children to be emotionally resilient than adults. But when there’s a will, comes a way and the thing about emotional resilience is that the relationships that a child has with the people around him/her also determines whether a child is resilient or not.
One of many influencing factors is the way a child is brought up or raised by his/her parents. Studies have shown that children with supportive parents that allow their children to be more independent to do things on their own and make decisions are more resilient than those who are “spoon-fed” in their early years. Why is this so?
This is because parenting styles that spoon-feed children does not allow the child to make mistakes and learn from them. It also limits a child’s exposure to solve problems on their own and negotiate their shortcomings to overcome any obstacles that they may encounter in their day to day lives. Children who are spoon-fed by their parents will also have this perception that they are not expected to manage their own emotions and behaviour as their parents will always be there to solve their problems and fix their mistakes.
There are countless ways to build emotional resilience in your children and this article is not implying that being there for your children is a bad thing – in this article, parents will learn how to improve their parenting skills and styles to nurture more independent, confident, and resilient children in three easy steps which are:
1. Allow Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable during someone’s childhood. Children are bound to make mistakes, fall down, have accidents, so on and so forth. As a parent, you mustn’t be afraid of such mistakes because it teaches your children about important aspects in life and builds their experience. The saying that we learn through our mistakes is a hundred percent true and children who are not afraid of making mistakes are proven to be more brave and confident.
2. Promote Risk-Taking and Problem Solving
Taking risks is something that not all children are willing to do because children fear the unknown. So, it is not uncommon if your child refuses to play at the playground just because there are too many unfamiliar children around. Risk-taking is something that gradually builds. The more you promote it at home, the more your child will get used to it and soon enough, it will be second nature for them to take risks. There many ways to get your child to take risks and most of them involve educational activities, interests, and hobbies that encourage them to toughen up (inside and outside) such as teaching them how to swim, participate in field trips and school excursions, or even joining a drama class where they are taught to speak and perform in front of other people. Problem-solving, on the other hand, is linked to mistakes. When a child makes mistakes, their first reaction is to panic and run to you, hoping that you would help them solve the issue at hand. Well, to build resilience is to let them solve problems on their own.
3. Acknowledge Misbehaviours
An emotionally resilient child is one who understands the consequences of their actions. Not one that does not acknowledge that some things are right and some things are wrong. Whenever your child misbehaves or breaks a rule, makes sure they face the consequences of such actions. This teaches them to cope with their emotions and know that it is not okay to throw tantrums every time things don’t go their way.
Most importantly, a major part in building emotional resilience in children is nurturing a strong sense of self-esteem and believing in themselves as resilient children are always unafraid and ready to face whatever challenges that they may face in their lives.
