What does resilience look like in children?

[Urbanbeetler]

Is it about children who bounce back up after a scraped knee without much fuss or is that too shallow? Is it more that dogged determination to master a skill or complete a task when things are a bit tough? What do do you actually actively do to make your children resilient? Is it an inate quality or purely nurture? To me it feels like it’s more important than ever right now.

when does supporting a child to become resilient cross over with borderline neglect or abuse

Resilience is an 11 year old girl walking to the corner shop a few doors down.

Neglect is her doing it in the rain, with no coat and slippers on. I saw this the other day. She might have had the street smarts to do it and cross a road or whatever but its the like touches, like someone at home reminding you to wrap up in a coat where true resilience will be.

Fishforclues reading your post is like reading about my own DD & DS!

DD is fairly quiet & used to think she was no good at a lot of stuff. She's a 'young' 9yrs in a classroom of 'older' 9 - 10 year olds. Last year she joined a ballet class & although doesn't talk to many of the girls yet, just smiles, she loves it (& is pretty good). This year put herself up for school council, she didn't get elected but we were so proud she tried! She's quietly starting to believe she's capable of a lot more than she first thought & it's lovely to see :)

DS is very determined, he pretty much taught himself to ride a bike but was awful at losing games (sulky & stroppy) so we taught him chess & after the first few games started playing properly & now if he wins against me I congratulate him! If he loses I model gracious winning. I still offer him tips etc & he's becoming really good.

DD also plays against him & sometimes wins & this has helped both of them.

Youngest DS (6yrs) is somewhere in between them in terms of personality but struggles to control his temper so good winning/losing & taking part in things is helping him.

Really interesting thread!

I think it helps to have a sense of perspective and for your identity not to be too tied into one area of your life. I think having interests outside school helps, as it means you don't feel defined by your academic performance. It means you can have a spectacularly bad day at school and then go to football club in the evening, where school doesn't matter, and see the school thing in context instead of it being the end of the world.

The resilience taught in school for younger children includes building and recognising your support network and trying to see positives in situations, both valuable as well.

Recognising and acknowleging when something has gone wrong before dusting yourself and ploughing on for another go. It's the middle ground between ignoring and denying the problem, and being defeated. You can't learn by ignoring and you get nowhere by giving up early on.

Recognising where good enough is good enough. Perfectionism and targets culture can be a natural enemy of resiliance. I found as a teacher that quests for perfection added a lot of work for little additional benefit and sometimes for the big picture and your own well being you have to recognise the point of good enough. That pressured culture can be very difficult for conciencious young people. I also found many were turned off because they percieved that their targets were unattainable and there was no point in even bothering in the face of what they perceive as inevitable faliure.

I have a DS with some degree of specific learning difficulty. His self esteem is good so far because we celebrate his strengths, improvements and effort and acknowledge and support the difficulties/ differences. I'm trying to celebrate him as a unique individual and not by average expectations and "shoulds". So far he seems to have good self awareness.

Really interesting thread. I always try and point out that everyone learns through practice.

Nan wasn't born knowing her numbers, even though she has a good job and uses maths everyday. She had to practice her sums same as you. If you get your sums wrong it doesn't matter. It's practice. That is all any of us can ever do, try our best and practice.