It’s important for parents to try and find ways to promote resilience amongst their children so that they don’t give up in the face of adversity.
Being a good role model and demonstrating how to handle challenges in a healthy way is very important, but there are various other strategies you can work on to help raise a resilient child. Here are some tips from a private school in London.
Identify Emotions
Your child needs to know that it’s ok to talk about their feelings rather than bottling them up, so make sure that’s something you encourage within your family home. However, before they can do that, they need to know what those feelings actually are. With that said, help them understand their emotions as and when they arise.
Say things like “I can see you’re upset about…” or “It looks like you’re getting frustrated with…” so that they can start to identify their feelings and express them in a healthy way. If your child can learn how to vocalise and deal with certain challenging emotions, they will be better equipped at dealing with them and moving forward.
Boost their Confidence
If a child is confident in their abilities and optimistic about the way things will turn out, they will be able to approach obstacles from a position of strength rather than shying away from them. With this in mind, it’s important to find opportunities to boost your child’s confidence where possible.
Encourage them to take risks, praise them when they deserve it and introduce them to new opportunities to shine whenever you can.
Encourage Exercise
Exercise is a great way to reduce stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions because it promotes the production of ‘feel good’ endorphins.
Try and encourage your child to get plenty of exercises, whether it’s playing outside, walking the dog or joining some sort of extra-curricular activity that focuses on movements, like dance, drama or sport. This should help your child deal with problems with a positive attitude.
