Recently a research revealed that one of the most important things for children to succeed is to build their resilience level. Life is very challenging for children these days. They are faced with an environment which is constantly changing and stressful. Today, children have a lot on their schedule, for e.g in addition to academics they also have sports and extra-curricular activities like singing, dancing, learning musical instruments etc. They are hard-pressed for time. In this post we talk about How to Build Resilience in Your Children.
Children are constantly stressed to be the best in everything that they do. These challenging and stressful situations can break them. Therefore it is very important to build resilience in children.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from stress, challenges, adversity or even trauma. Teaching resilience to children helps them to face life challenges with courage and calmness. The greatest thing about resilience is that it is not genetically inherited but it can be taught right from childhood. The right approach to any difficult situation can help build their resilience level and shape their future.
How to Build Resilience in Your Children
1. Surround your children with love and support.
Children who become successful are the ones who are loved and supported at home. Motivate and encourage your child to do better. When things are tough, speak to them and give them your unconditional love and support. They need to know that it is fine to make mistakes.
As a Christian, I share encouraging scriptures with my children that are apt for a particular situation. This gives them the comfort that God loves them unconditionally and that he has a special unique plan for each of us. Once children know that they are unconditionally loved and supported, they will have high self-confidence and self-esteem. This will help them to deal positively with any failure or challenge.
2. Teach them to be an optimist and to try again when they fall down.
It is important to teach your children that life is full of challenging situations and that there will be many situations when they will fail. When we nurture optimism in children, we show them how to fight back with their hard work in any difficult situation.
Soon their resilient attitude will bring about positive experiences, which will be edged in their memory. Once they learn to be positive and resilient during the most challenging situations of their life, they will become more successful.
3. Surround your children with supportive family and friends.
When children are down and out, you need to tell them that it is fine to talk to their family members or close friends. It is important that your children are surrounded with a good network of family and friends, who will empathize with them.
Hurts and disappointments are part of life and so it is important that they have people with whom they can share their feelings at that point in time. When children are connected with people, it can provide them with good social support which can help in strengthening their resilience.
4. Follow a healthy lifestyle of exercise and eating healthy meals.
Leading a healthy lifestyle will always help your children to lead a healthy life. Daily exercising and eating healthy is going to keep their mind and body healthy. When they have an established healthy daily routine then they will be able to handle their challenges in a much better way.
Children react or respond to challenging situations in many different ways. Sometimes they might become emotional, defiant, angry, resentful or just might withdraw in any situation. If you help them in building their resilience from early childhood, then they will be able to handle these situations in a better manner.
5. Try and model resiliency in your own circumstances.
Children are great observers and thus observe you very carefully. They will be watching as to how you react to every situation. Parents are supposed to be role models for their children. When times are tough in your house, you need to deal with calmness and wisdom. For e.g., while facing any terminal sickness in the family, stay strong and positive and have full faith in God.
6. Teach them to overcome fear and take safe risks.
Teach your children to face fear in the right way. Overcoming fear is one of the most empowering things. Encourage them to face things that they are fearful of. Do not push them but gently encourage them. Teach them to think about the pros and cons of any decision as this would help them in taking the right decisions.
Teach them to take safe risks which have lesser consequences. This will help to build their self-confidence and over a period of time, they will become more confident in taking higher risks. Courage helps in building resilience in children.
7. Avoid rescuing your children at every opportunity.
This is one of the most important things that today’s parents should learn. Today, we try to over-protect our children from any adversity and in the process children do not experience any difficult situations. Remember that it is their life and you cannot lead their life. These difficult and challenging situations will help them learn important life lessons early in life and thus become responsible adults in the future.
8. Teach your children to be open about changes in life.
Children are averse to changes in life. At times they do not want to try out or explore new things. Encourage them to explore and take safe risks. Explain to them the consequences of taking wrong decisions and guide them How to avoid such situations in the future.
Every child is unique and so you will have to deal with each situation differently. Try and help your children deal with these situations appropriately so that they build resilience from childhood.
Hope you enjoyed reading this article on How to Build Resilience in Your Children.
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