How well does your child deal with adversity, cope in difficult situations, become stronger after disappointments? In other words, how resilient is she? We often think that our job is to protect our children from the tough situations of life, but in fact, our protection helps only us. We don’t want to hear their anger, experience their sadness, or deal with their disappointment. In many cases, we were not allowed those feelings so we don’t know how to allow our children to have them. They may frighten us—so we make sure they don’t have them. When we prevent these experiences, we diminish their resilience, their ability to cope with life’s inevitable frustrations and situations beyond their control.
Building resilience in children requires that we:
- Trust our child’s ability to handle difficult problems
- Convey in words and body language confidence in their ability to cope
- Allow and accept their feelings of sadness, fear, anger, disappointment over situations they cannot change
- Do not jump in to rescue them or fix situations that cause their frustration in order to avoid our own fears