Supporting and Developing Resilience in Children

BY JAYDE SIMMS

Many parents and teachers view raising resilient children as an ideal goal in child development. You’ll usually hear the term ‘resilience’ in parent-teacher meetings, on playgrounds, and before exam season: 

“I just wish my child could be more resilient”, or 

“he/she/they will benefit from developing some resilience”

Resilience - the 'support skill'

Resilience is an undeniably essential tool to developing happy, successful and flourishing children, and as a teacher I have endeavoured to build resilience in my students. However, there is more to resilience than first meets the eye.

First, like all skills, resilience is neither instant nor permanent. It is not something that you get and then we can tick a box – you are now resilient. Instead, resilience is something you show repeatedly through life’s hardships and situations. 

I like to think of resilience as something that can, and should, fluctuate depending on what is happening around you. You could be super resilient on Monday and extra vulnerable on Tuesday. Your Tuesday vulnerability does not mean that you were not resilient on Monday, or that you will not be resilient in the future.

Additionally, we run upon tricky ground if we dive straight into resilience skills without fulfilling the needs that must come first.

In this article, I will do my best to explore ways in which we can support and develop the slippery skill that is, resilience, without ignoring our very natural human fluctuations and vulnerabilities.

The sneaky step

With the above disclaimers in mind, there are indeed strategies that we can learn and employ that go towards developing resilience in our children. I am certain that almost everyone at some point through The-Pandemic-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named has researched resilience strategies. However, there is a sneaky step that must come first for those strategies to be effective.

This sneaky first step is safety. In this context, safety refers to a sense of emotional security that we build in our classrooms and homes. Once this feeling of safety is cultivated, the environment will be ready for the development of resilience.

"When we learn how to become resilient, we learn how to embrace the beautifully broad spectrum of the human experience", author Jaeda Dewalt.

Resilience, by nature, is a very difficult skill to develop because it needs us to be vulnerable and to open ourselves to potential failure. If we do not feel safe, it is impossible to be vulnerable. 

Bonnie Badenoch, in her book The Heart of Trauma, says “when we neuro-receive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability”.

Now let's look at some of the strategies to create emotional safety and build resilience in our classrooms at the British International School of Kuala Lumpur and for you to try at home.

Acceptance

Acceptance forms the absolute foundation of emotional safety. We encourage the children to accept and respect their emotions by checking in with themselves throughout the day. It is also very powerful for adults to show emotional self-awareness. 

I’d like to share a story about an interaction between one of our Year 2 teachers and a student, who we’ll call Michael, to demonstrate these interactions that build emotional safety. Last week Michael was acting uncharacteristically quiet, tired, and reserved. The teacher began the conversation by talking about her own feelings and utilising our wellbeing wall.

“Today, I am feeling tired. Can you help me show ‘tired’?” the teacher asked.

“Okay”, Michael said, pointing to the tired emotion on the wellbeing wall.

“I’m not sure how to feel better. I still have lots of teaching to do. Michael, do you have any ideas to help me?” the teacher asked.

Our teachers outwardly show their emotional thinking and admit to not being an emotionally perfect human - nobody is! Our goal is to mirror the acceptance of our emotions so Michael can see that both he and his teacher are in an emotionally safe space.

The direct question allows Michael to think critically about emotions and wellbeing, as well as practicing his creative problem-solving.

“You could take some coffee or do some colouring,” Michael replied.

"Yes, great idea, Michael. Let me try that at lunch. What about you? How are you feeling?” the teacher asked.

"I think I am angry”, Michael replied and pointed at the angry icon on the wellbeing wall.

"That’s fine, anger happens to everyone. Do you want to say why you’re angry or do you want me to give you some ideas to feel better?” the teacher asked.

Here the teacher pivoted the child into thinking about their own feelings. This creates the space for Michael to accept his anger, instead of hide it and results in him engaging actively with the strategies to deal with that emotion.

“I’m not sure”, he replied.

“Okay, how about you write it down, put it in the jar to get it out of your brain, and I’ll read it later. Then you are free to have fun and we can come back to it and think of some ideas together.

Shame-free conversations about how we feel are crucial for children and adults to experience the acceptance that results in emotional safety. Age does not influence our needs as much as we would hope it does! Whether you are 5 or 95, we have the same fundamental needs.

Emotional and self-work is never complete. If children see us as a work-in-progress in some areas, just as they are, our mutual growth can be more authentic. Therefore, having rich, equal conversations between an adult and child about emotions will provide the foundation for us to start tackling other social skills, including resilience.

Failure

The next strategy we will talk about is providing multiple opportunities for failure. This may seem counter-productive because most parents do not want their children to fail. After all, we want happy and successful children, right?

However, if there is a culture of safety and acceptance, then failure can be instrumental in developing resilience. 

In Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit, she notes that sustained effort through hardships and periods of non-reward is a powerful indicator of success. This means that continued effort, even if we frequently fail, equals success in the end. Crucially, this is true even if we do not have a natural talent in that area!

We need to fail in order to give us the opportunity to practice sustained effort. During that sustained effort, we will feel vulnerable and we might uncover what we need to change in order to ultimately succeed.

As adults, we know how painful failure can be. Therefore, it is natural for us to try to protect our children from experiencing it. However, by protecting them from failure we could also be protecting them from the opportunity to practice, develop grit, learn why they failed and ultimately, how they could succeed.

This does not mean that we should leave our little ones to fail without support. This is where the pursuit of resilience can be tricky. We have to capitalise on that culture of equal emotional safety that we already spent some time cultivating.

When a child fails:

• Explain that we as adults fail too, and share examples
• Point out the positive parts of our personality that this failure will help improve
• Stress that failure does not weaken our worth

When properly supported, failure can help children see and believe that their worth is unchanged by circumstance.

Creating an unconditional positive environment for a child when they fail means they will be more comfortable failing. They develop a tolerance being in situations where they failed and learn to pick themselves up and resume their efforts. A trait also known as resilience!

Gratitude

I want to end on a really powerful and positive note, which lead to my last strategy: gratitude. I know, cue the eye-rolls! 

Gratitude is one of those buzz words that causes a collective sigh from the audience, and I know why. Not everyone will find value in buying a Gratitude Journal, lighting some incense, and writing down the three things to be grateful for each day while sipping a chamomile tea. If that is your style, more power to you. It is my style too!

There is no right way to foster a sense of gratitude, so for most people you may need to try something that fits your personality. We can cultivate gratitude privately in our own mind by thinking about just one good thing on the commute home. No need for a fancy journal!

Similar to the failure strategy we talked about earlier, the role of the adult is instrumental in developing an attitude of gratitude in our children. Outwardly verbalising gratitude in front of a child helps it to become natural and automatic in their own lives. We remember what someone tells us for a short time, but we become what someone shows us.

It makes sense that we will draw upon our resilience when we encounter dark or trying times. Spending time getting into the habit of gratitude will create a bank of happy memories and positive attitude to draw from in times of need so that those dark times do not feel so dark.

Gratitude is a strategy to make it easier to be resilient so that you are less likely to feel overwhelmed during times of struggle. Because why make it harder for us, or our children, to be resilient than we need to?

Ultimately, we are all imperfect human beings throughout various stages of life. It is okay for children and adults to be unapologetically a “work-in-progress". In fact, that acknowledgement provides fertile ground for humans to grow and flourish.

Resilience is a very important skill to have and use when we undoubtedly encounter tough times. With a firm foundation of acceptance and support, repeated opportunities to practice failing and a gratitude habit, we can make resilience more accessible to us in those dark times.

It is important to remember that it is natural to fluctuate in our resilience. It is natural to struggle some days and it’s powerful to be aware and vocal with what we need. With that in mind and plenty of practice, we can support the development of many social skills, resilience just being one of them.