Resilience is the ability to adapt and recover from stress, challenges, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant stressors. It means "bouncing back" from hardships. Resilient kids can handle setbacks, adapt to change, and persevere even when things get tough.

As parents, we must raise children who can thrive in an unpredictable world. We can't always protect our kids from problems, disappointments, or trauma, but we can teach them resilience. Resilience helps kids succeed academically and socially, transition to adulthood, and overcome life's inevitable challenges.

So how do we cultivate emotional resilience in our children? Here are some key evidence-based strategies:

Model Healthy Emotional Skills Yourself

Children learn emotional skills by watching adults. Your parenting style—how you handle emotions, stress, and difficult feelings—teaches your children important skills. When parents react strongly, lash out, ruminate, or shut down in response to stress, kids learn unhealthy emotional patterns. Kids can emulate positive coping behaviours like emotional awareness, impulse control, adaptability, and resilience when you model them. Try to handle problems calmly and optimistically. Discuss challenges, find solutions, and model determination to overcome obstacles. Show that mistakes are learning and strengthening opportunities. Your resiliency shows kids how to adapt in difficult situations.

Validate All Emotions

While we naturally praise happy, cheerful children, we should also acknowledge their full range of emotions. Kids need to understand and manage sadness, anger, jealousy, frustration, fear, and embarrassment. However, negative reactions to distress can teach them to hide, suppress, or shame normal reactions to upsetting events. Label and validate their feelings without judgement. Say, “You seem disappointed that your friend couldn't come over. It's okay to be sad." This response supports and helps them process difficult emotions. Teach your kids that all feelings, even big, uncomfortable ones, are normal and temporary. Allowing themselves to feel and express all their emotions builds resilience.

Use Empathy and Active Listening

When kids are upset, we want to help, offer solutions, or comfort them. Before building resilience, empathetic listening is more important. Start by noticing nonverbal cues of emotional distress and sitting with them. Be attentive, make eye contact, gently ask open-ended questions, and repeat what you hear without judgement. Understand their struggles and show concern. Give them space to express themselves while feeling heard and understood by you. Don't interrupt, answer, or reduce emotion. Your compassionate support can help them understand and process the experience. Being truly emotionally “seen” aids recovery and resilience.

Teach Coping Strategies

After validating emotions, help your child cope. Ask directly what would make them feel better. Discuss options like getting support from friends/family, calming activities, changing expectations/goals, or learning the task. Determine what they can control and what they must accept. Help them choose situation-specific coping strategies. When stressed or overwhelmed, practicing when things are calm will help you find coping resources. Use mindfulness/relaxation techniques like deep breathing, guided imagery, and progressive muscle relaxation to ground and manage extreme emotions, as well as change dysfunctional thoughts to be more accurate or helpful. Practice assertiveness in peer conflicts and performance anxiety role plays. Discuss resilient role models they admire. Kids books, shows, and inspiring stories of people overcoming major life challenges. Helping kids build their coping repertoire is only limited by imagination and should use their strengths and talents.

Allow Risk Taking and Tolerate Mistakes

Kids test assumptions, experiment, and push their limits, which can lead to emotional and physical bruises. Real-world problem-solving with measured risks helps kids learn to solve problems on their own, make good decisions, and think critically. If activities fit developmental norms and kids are ready, let them take charge. Understand that small mistakes prepare them to face bigger life challenges with flexibility and confidence. Instead of shielding kids from disappointments and harsh realities, let them experience the logical consequences of their choices. Promote effort over results and view setbacks as learning opportunities. Help kids evaluate their approach and make incremental improvements for next time. Celebrate hard-won mastery progress to encourage kids to persevere through setbacks. The freedom to choose their path boosts confidence and resilience.

Practice Bouncing Back from Hardships

All kids face significant adversity, such as a close friend moving away, failing to make the team or band, getting a bad grade, parents divorcing, or a grandparent dying. Sadly, childhood traumas and stressors occur. While painful, going through a loss or crisis at a younger age can help them develop coping skills that will protect and strengthen them when they are diagnosed with alcoholism, PTSD, chronic illness, job loss, divorce, or disability as adults. Take advantage of difficult life events to show positive adaptation. First, discuss anger, confusion, and grief with kids without judgement. 

Next, model appropriate coping behaviours by crying and talking about cherished memories. Encourage children to make a memory book/box, plant a garden, or dedicate a performance or victory to the deceased. Remind them that adults are trustworthy and caring despite disruption. Encouragement shows faith in their ability to overcome difficult changes and losses. When kids find hope after traumatic events through caring connections and self-comforting rituals, neural pathways for flexibility and endurance grow, increasing resilience.

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