eNewsletter

Student Wellbeing

Promoting Resilience in Children

Resilience is a person’s ability to manage adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. For children challenges they may face include starting a new school, moving house, welcoming a new sibling into the family, bullying, homework, tests/assessments, and family changes.

 

When a child overcomes a challenge, they develop a sense of achievement. This success helps children to build confidence in their own strengths and prepares them to face future bigger challenges. Resilience allows them to persevere and ‘have another go’ when things don’t work out the way they expected.

 

Ways to build resilience in your child:

  • 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.