How do I teach resilience?

[Mummyofbabyandcats]

I have a dd, 2 . She is just a fun loving character however I have been wondering for sometime about resilience. It's something that pops up on MN often and it's importance.

It's something I don't think manage well at. All through life I've quit one thing or another and was bullied as a child. I take the passive approach.

So how do i teach my daughter resilience and to speak up for herself ?

There are lots of lovely posts on here, all of which I agree with.

But, for me (working in a school). A lot of the posts on here are about you relate to your child in your home. I don't disagree with any of them.
But if a "challenge" comes your way from outside the home - listen to it. I think I'm kind-of talking school. If a teacher tells you "your child won't share" DON'T just robustly refute it. Ditto if a teacher later on tells you your child isn't working hard enough. Or tells you something else you REALLY don't want to hear.
I'm not saying blindly accept. But I AM saying be prepared to hear ill of your child and deal with it.

I agree redhats it doesn’t help anyone if you don’t at least take onboard what is said and consider it. Especially if you then realise that your child is struggling with something and needs help. Or just needs a reality check!

I think with resilience you need to give your feelings about a situation space (ie I felt disappointed that I didn’t do well in the race) but then to find hope. You can’t press through in a situation if you don’t have hope. What were the positives? (ie did I make it to the finish line?) What do you have control over? (ie can I improve my fitness so I do better next time?) What good thing can I set my eye on which is not affected by the temporary setback?

All this is more for when she’s older. It’s easy to worry (I speak from experience!) Pp have given some great advice. Enjoy your daughter

I also think the notion of being ever happy and trying to create that for our children does them a disservice. When the family dog dies it is sad. When grandma is very unwell it’s both sad and worrying. I think we need to accept those feelings and allow them to work through them with loving support it not try to make them happy. That’s something intrinsic.

I’ve thought a lot about this too and I think that it is an ongoing process, even as an adult.

DD is 8. Things I do are:

• activities she has to stick at for a term or season. If she’s in a team or part of a performance she sticks at it so she doesn’t let her team down.

• provide her with opportunities to practice activities and skills she has difficulty with. Make sure she understands that practice helps and you can’t expect to be good at things first time.

• teach self reflection. We do a “what made me happy today / what could I have done better” together.

• talk to her about things that don’t go right for me. We cook a lot together, things often don’t work out!

With my 2yo, i never make a fuss if he falls over, I just ask "oh dear, are you ok?". He never cries when he falls, so if he does, i know he has hurt himself!

I try to allow him to try things he is interested in as he is more likely to persevere if they are hard. So for instance when he went through a climbing phase, I let him get it out of his system rather than deciding for him that it was too high etc.

I also try to 'scaffold' things rather than do them for him, or allow him to decide that it's impossible. I can then gradually reduce the amount of help as he gets more confident.

I’m also a supporter of Maslow and the hierarchy of needs and wonder if we get it wrong in our unachievable goal of perpetual happiness.
Do we, as a society put children’s basic physiological needs first? That includes sleep and personally I think children need teaching to sleep properly as a foundation for resilience. Sometimes I think we put faux happiness above this and allow tiny children to participate in adult events late into the evening rather than sleep. Children out for nights at public houses or running around at ten o’clock. Children on screens until midnight when they have school the next day etc.
Controversial, perhaps but sleep is such a fundamental key to wellbeing and resilience.

I totally agree @CherryPavlova, I think sleep is so essential to emotional regulation and children need proper sleep. Mine still at 6 and 8 sleep for about 10/11 hours a day so if they wake at 7 they’re in bed and asleep for 8/8.30. There’s variation on that for special events but mostly my kids are in bed relatively early.

I think getting the basics of food, sleep, physical activity right goes a long way to promoting resilience in kids, as does letting them make their own entertainment, letting them be a bit bored, limiting screen time. All basic parenting but deeply unpopular in some circles.

Absolutely agree with the basics
Sleep,diet,exercise,fresh air and nature.
Stop scheduling everything and if they are bored get them to do chores,works a treat
If possible pets,they feed,clean and walk them.
Sad but pets dying and how you handle it is really important.
Allow them to "feel" without trying to change that feeling because its uncomfortable.
Set boundaries and stick to them

YY to the sleep, even in cultures where DC go to bed late it's not a free for all eg. parents tend to be quite strict on enforcing naps/quiet time after lunch instead.

That's another good one I think, teaching DC that sometimes they just have to be bored and quiet for a bit (eg drs waiting rooms, long bus journeys etc).

I also think the notion of being ever happy and trying to create that for our children does them a disservice
Yes better to help your child recognise and name their negative feelings and know they’re ok and just a normal part of life. So they can say this makes me feel sad or angry etc. Emotions are confusing for kids and not being able to express what they feel means it comes out as acting up sometimes.

A very difficult question for children to answer is ‘did you have a good day’, better to ask specific questions about factual things and then ask about their feelings. It’s too general, and a day is a very long time.

My most resilient child now an adult was severely dyslexic. He had virtually no aids to help (until we found some in year 9) but we always supported him and gave him opportunities he could rise to and do well at to maintain self esteem (music, theatre etc). His resilience comes from facing struggles and critics and winning some battles and losing others. He sees many young adults who are not resilient but theyve been both lucky and protected.

I don’t understand the sunflower analogy.

Sometimes everything goes wrong and you have to start again from scratch? Good practice?

Actually everything didn’t go wrong, in the sunflower analogy someone willfully destroyed your project (growing sunflowers) bit by bit. A horrible example of so called “tough love” there’s no way in hell I’d do that to my child.

I think the sunflower idea is vile.

No need to be deliberately cruel to your kids like that.

Plenty of opportunity to learn resilience in real life.

Allow them to make mistakes and fail, let them struggle and be bad at something (art, cooking, sports are good activities to do this). Let them do things by themselves, don't try to take over, like in craft for example, I found it this quite difficult when my DC were small as I'm a perfectionist.

There’s a big difference between helping children cope with set-backs (lots of good advice from PPs above) and deliberately creating set-backs (destroying sunflowers one by one 😱).

With regard to encouraging children to speak up for themselves, my advice is to think about how you behave when your child disagrees with you. Do you get angry, upset, emotionally cold, dismissive, flex your superior intellect and knowledge? Children need to be able to express their feelings and opinions without being psychologically manipulated into suppressing them, even though you, as parent, make the final decisions.

I also think the sunflowers idea is stupid.

There are plenty of opportunities to learn about resilience that just come along naturally in life.

I would be really upset if someone snapped one of my plants to teach me a lesson.

I too think a deliberate act of cruelty teaches a child not to trust the person they should have absolute faith in. Children need to grow in a family where loving kindness is the norm. We parents get it wrong often enough as we are human; we don’t need to create artificial failings.
Loving kindness and total indulgence are not the same thing. Sometimes loving kindness needs to be strong in opposing the child’s demands and wishes.

With regard to encouraging children to speak up for themselves, my advice is to think about how you behave when your child disagrees with you
Yes and never be afraid to say ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘I was wrong’. It’s not weakness to back down from an argument with your child if you originally reacted in haste because you were tired or distracted (as we all sometimes are). Let them see none of us are perfect and it’s ok to admit it and makes amends if we can.

The sunflower thing sounds awful!! Like other people have said there are naturally lots of situations that crop up that can teach resilience without being deliberately mean!!

The scouts are a good way for children to learn resilience and self confidence. I was recently at a whole group event so beavers age 6 up to scouts age 14 and my friend came along with her 6 year old who is just starting. Her husband mentioned how confident all the older kids were but in a nice helpful way not a cocky teenager way like other kids!
DD is in scouts and has just turned 11, a couple of months ago she went to a scouts bushcraft event. They had to find their food from coordinates, make a fire and cook for themselves and build a shelter from sticks and a tarp. She had agreed to go and signed up to it but when it came to the day she was in tears saying she didn’t want to do it. I told her as she had agreed to do it and we had paid she needed to go along (if she hated it and wanted to come home I agreed I would go and get her later as long as she had given it a good try) anyway she stayed the whole night and came home absolutely beaming and raving about how good it was. I think it’s things like that that help the kids in scouts become confident in their own abilities plus they don’t magically light a fire the first time they try, it takes practise and experience!

When I thought my DCs would really enjoy something, but they didn't want to do it, I insisted they give it a go. They always DID enjoy it. If, after a few months, they stopped enjoying it, then fair enough.

I agree with making sure the basics are covered. Decent sleep patterns and a healthy life style (more or less) is sooooo important.

My kids are adults. 2 are really resilient. Nothing ever phases them and they go through life dealing with the ups and downs with ease. 1 is more normal and the 4th isn’t the least bit resilient and is always worrying about everything. It doesn’t help that she has such high standards for herself. I swear I raised all four of them the same.

I’m not convinced you can teach kids to be resilient. Some of them are and some of them aren’t. 🤷🏻‍♀️