Resilience

[Janeyraemer]

My little boy is doing well overall in Reception. However his teacher mentioned at a recent parents meeting that one area for improvement is motivation, particularly how he deals with setbacks. If he gets something wrong he can get very upset and cry. Any tips for how I could help his emotional resilience?

Modelling making mistakes and dealing with them well. Go to the shop get to the till no purse, ask cashier if you can pop home and collect purse ( supermarkets have procedure for this), silly mummy never mind we'll just pop home get the purse -no harm done.
Knock over a cup of coffee, oh well let's mop it up and make another one.

Thank you so much - great idea!

Is he like it at home?
Maybe more opportunities to ‘fail’ with an ‘it’s fine’ attitude- no attention for tears etc, just gently ‘getting on with it’.
Model it- if you make a mistake, no big deal.

I've had this mentioned to re: my 5 year old DS. He gets upset when his elaborate building creations go wrong, so school is talking a lot about growth mindset.

We've been asked to make sure we're giving him plenty of chances to fail eg play board games and lose etc. Think about activities with delayed gratification too, so jigsaw puzzles that take more than one sitting, longer books read over several days.

Thanks both. He's not really like it at home except for Board games now you mention it. He loves winning and can be competituve. I probably am guilty of subconsciously letting him win to avoid the inevitable upset that will follows so perhaps I needs to focus on that a little bit so he gets more used to handling disappointment. I will definitely try to reassure him more when things go wrong too.

My dd was a bad loser at board games and a friend with older kids suggested, don't let her win, make losing normal. Praise being a good loser, model being a good loser, watch a bit of sports where people lose. We did this and it cured her.

So in your case, don't allow him to always win at games, being able to deal with not being the winner, not coming first, being praised for taking part are all ways to build resilience. Learning to deal with disappointment is a key lifeskill. They do a lot of focus in schools on 'marvellous mistakes', getting it wrong shows you're learning etc

Also, keep a healthy dose of perspective that it's normal at this age and not a worry. Start modelling the making light of "imperfections" by making light of this one.

Also stuff like teaching him how to mop up spills, and trusting him to get the cloth etc and sort it out himself. If he is confident he can put things right, he has less to fear.