To help your child get through failure and rebound from these failures stronger than ever, embrace your own experiences with failure.
As adults, we often try to cover up our failures or not talk about them. It might feel that doing so would threaten our jobs and relationships.
However, embracing our own mistakes and teaching our kids that mistakes are okay will help them be less anxious about failure and more likely to learn from own mistakes.
This week, teach thoughtful problem solving to your child to boost their resilience skills.
Good problem solving skills build our resilience and boost our confidence in getting through difficulties.
Instructions
Start by having your child come up with a list of at least five (5) or six (6) possible responses to the problem.
Help them select their two options and create a pros and cons list for those two (2) options.
Select the best option and have your child give it a try.
Evaluate how the response went and, if needed, select another option to try.
This approach will help your child with many of the umbrella skills – improving their ability to think flexibly, come up with multiple solutions to a problem, act for themselves, re-evaluate their efforts and ultimately bounce back better from challenging times.
Consider the way you talk about yourself to your child…
Children are sponges and will pick up their primary parent’s way of thinking about the world. What does that mean? It means that if you are are an optimist, your kids will be, too. If you tend to put a negative frame on your life events, your children will also learn to interpret the world this way.
Why does this matter? An optimistic frame has been shown to better support resilience and your child’s hope for their future, helping them bounce back from tough times.
Think about these two key principles to adopt an optimistic explanatory style and boost your child’s resilience.
1. Temporary vs. Permanent
When bad events feel permanent, it can hinder your child from believing they can change their circumstances. In contrast, when difficult events happen, as they will in every life, show your child that most of these are temporary and can be overcome with time.
Start by avoiding “always” and “never” in your explanations. “This kind of thing always happens to me” feels pretty permanent. The more temporary your child sees challenging times to be, the more they will be optimistic for the future.
2. Specific vs. General
It’s easy to see patterns in life and group them all together, but this style of explanation can leave us feeling pessimistic about our chances to make change. Try to be specific about the issues you face.
For example, after a lazy day with nothing crossed off the to-do list, try saying “I was feeling lazy today” instead of “I am lazy”. The latter is more specific to the situation at hand and leaves room for tomorrow to be different while the former seems unchangeable.
In the business world, the concept of ‘pivoting’ means adapting and modifying based on changes in the market. Pivoting is important for businesses to avoid being stuck in one direction when faced with a continually changing environment.
It is also an important concept for us as individuals. Our lives and environments are constantly changing and we do not always know the path that will take us in our life. Being able to pivot helps us build our resilience.
For kids approaching the end of high school and considering their career path, pivoting becomes particularly critical. If their post-secondary education or career goals do not come to fruition, are they able to adapt and be comfortable with change? The alternative is an intense amount of stress from trying to stay on the same path.
Today’s resilience-building tip is to help your children develop confidence in all the things that they can do for themselves.
It can be difficult to resist the urge to fix everything for your children. It is important, however, to allow your children to explore challenges and solve problems independently. This helps boost their confidence and resilience for tackling future challenges.
Dr. Jen shares a related experience from her family and describes the increased confidence that she saw in her daughter as a result.
