Building Resilience in Children: Strategies for Teachers and Parents

Without question, having resilience remains necessary as working through challenges is a part of life. It’s best to begin building resilience early on, meaning during childhood, so that more opportunities to build are seized and individuals will likely end up better equipped for these inevitable challenges. Teachers as well as parents have this responsibility since they’re usually the most influential figures in children’s lives. However, it can be a feat that’s tricky to approach. If you’ve been thinking about this and you’re a teacher or parent looking for advice on building resilience in your children, here are some strategies:

Help Them Improve Their Self-Esteem

Self-esteem can be linked to resilience. If children have confidence in themselves, there’s a better chance of them believing that they’re able to overcome the obstacles they encounter.

Introduce Healthy Ways of Handling Disappointment/Negative Emotions

One effective way is changing their perspective. For instance, if/when they’re initially disappointed by a certain outcome, such as losing a game or getting lower grades than expected, encourage them to see the positive side(s) of it.

Some questions that could be asked in cases like these are:

• What did you learn?
• What would you do next time for a better result? (If applicable)
• Could the outcome have been worse?

When building resilience in children, also ensuring that they learn how to process negative emotions so they’re more knowledgeable about navigating them going forward is crucial. Using outlets including journalling, drawing, and discussing the experience with someone remain good options for expressing themselves as well as making sense of what they’re feeling. Overall, children shouldn’t stifle their feelings to build resilience. It should encompass gaining proper tools for coping with these feelings in order to not only successfully continue on, but also do so in a healthier way.

Provide Continuous Guidance And Support

Building resilience may look/seem different depending on the child, but providing continuous guidance and support when engaging with what’s stated above regardless is important. This process will likely be ongoing due to the various types of difficult experiences they’ll face, so even if you’re seeing desired results your job may not necessarily be done. Being available to guide at any time during these moments definitely makes a difference.

Ideal as well as reasonable goals to work toward as a parent or teacher include:

• Finding a balance between remaining supportive and not providing too much intervention when the child faces certain challenges.
• Establishing that there is (or will be) an expectation for them to manage some difficult emotions, experiences, setbacks, etc. responsibly but also them understanding that they’re not alone in it.

Building resilience in children is a very important and at times difficult task that teachers and parents must take on. A good combination of strategies to tackle it includes improving their self-esteem, determining what healthy methods of coping with their negative emotions work best, and providing support and guidance throughout the process while having feasible goals in this respect. All in all, if you consider using these suggested strategies, you’re on your way to effectively building resilience in the children you teach or your own.