Student Wellbeing

BUILDING RESILIENCE IN CHILDREN

Resilience is the ability to adapt and bounce back after challenges and hard times. For children challenges they may face include starting a new school, moving house, welcoming a new sibling into the family, bullying and family breakdown. 

Children build resilience over time through experience, each time they overcome a challenge, it builds their confidence to handle the next challenge.

Ways children can be supported to build resilience:

• Support your child but do not solve every minor problem or disappointment for them. For example, if your child doesn’t get invited to a birthday party or didn’t get what they want for their birthday, you could talk about how they feel instead of trying to fix the problem.
• Avoid predicting and preventing problems for your child. This might mean letting your child hand in homework that’s wrong or not replacing a broken toy. Overcoming small challenges builds your child’s resilience for bigger setbacks.
• Help them identify and manage strong emotions. For example, your child might be worried about a family member who’s sick. You could say, ‘I can see you’re really worried about Grandpa. It’s OK to be worried. But remember we’re doing everything we can to help him get better’.
• Encourage them to have another go when things didn’t work out the first time. Praise your child for trying, no matter the result. You could say ‘I’m proud of you for finishing the race’ or ‘Well done for giving it another go’.
• Build their self-compassion and nurture a positive self-view. Self-compassion helps your child deal with disappointment, failures, or mistakes by being kind to themselves. In turn, this helps them to move on from difficult experiences.
• Make it a habit to recognise and acknowledge when things are going well.  For example, during family meals you could each share one positive thing from your day.