Teaching Our Children How to Be Resilient
When children go through tough times we might hear someone say, “children are resilient”. But what does that actually mean? Are we expecting our children to be able to pick up all the pieces of a poor, or dissatisfying, or hard-to-handle situation that they have never experienced before, and then start a new phase of their life? Are they supposed to have feelings about their situation, or just pick up the pieces and move on as if nothing ever happened? Are their feelings about their circumstance helping guide their next choices? What’s a parent to do….?
The definition of being resilient is “the ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; AKA buoyancy”. For many children, their current circumstance might be something that they are able to manage or accomplish. For others, however, this is a more difficult transition and possibly even something that they struggle with for the rest of their lives.
A typical example might be when a child is at a younger age in life and his/her parents get divorced; this scenario can possibly have some different results depending on a variety of factors. There are children who have a set of parents who can communicate respectfully while compromising effectively to work together for the greater good of the child. Then there are the parents who might tend to hold disdain or grudges toward others, which creates an uneasy and questionable atmosphere for children. This is just one example of how we, as parents, can assist our children in becoming more resilient or set them up for a harder road to travel toward and throughout adulthood.
It takes effort on our part to provide encouragement, prayer, and guidance; and, it takes us stepping aside so the child can problem-solve various situations on their own. Either way, we play a major role in resiliency skill development. Both strategies are necessary; however, it matters when we use the correct tool and at the correct time. When children are younger, they need to know that they can reach out to their parents and to be cared for in many ways. Each time they go through something tough, parents can help teach them to be resilient by asking guided but non-judgmental questions: How did the child find themselves in that situation? What would they like to happen next? What other steps do they need to take? And, how can they reach their desired goal in respect to their circumstance?
