Building up resilience in kids is not only important for your child’s mental health but helps with their ability to cope with difficulties that are a part of everyday life. In fact, children with greater resilience are generally happier, better able to manage stress, deal with ups and downs such as moving house or changing schools, as well as bounce back from challenging situations. These skills and habits are sure to carry over to adolescence and adulthood – so the sooner they’re built up the better! Here’s everything you need to know about the importance of building resilience in your kids.
Why Is Resilience So Important?
Resilience is no longer just about bouncing ‘back’, it’s about bouncing ‘forward’ too. It’s more than getting back to normal after facing a difficult situation – it means learning from the process in order to become stronger and better at tackling the next challenge. For children, being resilient has so many benefits, such as improved mental health, less stress and improved motivation.
Encourages Children To Take Healthy Risks
Resilient kids are much more likely to take healthy risks because they’re not worrying what will happen if they fail or don’t live up to others expectations. Instead they can be curious, brave and trust their instinct. Having this built up resilience will mean they’ll be confident in their limits and not be scared to push themselves outside of their comfort zone.
Improved Mental Health
Resilience is important mostly for our mental health. The more resilient a child is, the less they will experience stress, as they’ll have the skills to deal with whatever life has to throw at them. In fact, resilience helps kids build the confidence to navigate around stressful situations, such as moving house or changing schools. The more times they’re able to bounce back on their own, the more they internalise the message they are strong and can overcome any obstacle that comes in their way!
Helps Kids Embrace Their Mistakes
People who avoid failure in life often lack resilience, and in children this can make them highly anxious, especially when it comes to new situations. Building up resilience in your children means they’ll be able to embrace any mistakes they make, which is one of the most important life skills they’ll ever learn. It also helps promote a growth mindset and gives kids the message that mistakes help them learn. Try talking with them about a time you made a mistake and what you learnt from it.
Helps Children Develop a Positive Outlook
Being resilient will mean your child will naturally start to be more positive and optimistic. Instead of focusing on the negatives, resilience will teach children to reframe their thoughts to try and find the positive.
Check out our Learning@Home Podcast episode ‘Building Resilience in Kids’. We talk with Alison Parker & Lacey Frank, two mothers who are former teachers and now run Tutor Doctor of the Emerald Coast, about why building resilience is imperative to help kids thrive in academics and in life. They give advice on how to foster strong relationships with your kids, how to role model resilience, and how to teach children that failure is OK.
