Building Resilience in Children
Photo by Andrew Coop on Unsplash
Island Health offered an article on “Building Resilience in Children” in their November 2021 issue, offering suggestions to support children in building the capacity to recover from difficulties and develop qualities of resilience.
The article addresses the questions often asked in conversations about life after COVID:
· Would you consider yourself to be resilient?
· What about your children?
· What makes some people more resilient than others?
· How can we support children to become more resilient?
The article is based on an interview with Dr. Lise McLewin, a Registered Psychologist who works with children and youth, who notes, “Resilience is when a person not only bounces back following stress or change, but they have learned from the experience, which will help them cope better with the next stressor that comes along.”
Dr. McLewin’s suggestions for building resilience at any age include:
· Be Supportive
o It is important for children to have supportive adults in their lives
o Creating resilience involves a daily practice of how we speak to children and help them see their own strengths
o Developing a Growth Mindset helps children know that where they are today doesn’t have to be where they are tomorrow.
o Parents can help children reframe difficult experiences by encouraging phrases such as “I’m not there yet.”, or “I’m working on it.”, rather than “I can’t.”; by asking questions such as, “What would you do differently next time?”; and validating, “That was a challenge but you stuck with it and made it through.”
· Reduce Stress – Yours and Theirs
o Be aware that stress in contagious. Your children will know and feel your stress and will learn from observation how to deal with stress in positive ways.
o Dr. McLewin emphasized the importance for parents of valuing their own self-care. “Try building in caring routines during this back-to-school time for yourself and your children. Get plenty of sleep, practice gratitude, get active every day and most importantly, find fun and laughter as often as possible.”
o Know when to reach out for support when your own stress becomes too much to bear on your own.
· Stay Connected
o Find ways to stay connected with family, friends and loved ones, even if the pandemic has meant that creativity is necessary to ensure this. Dr. McLewin notes, “It’s important that we let the people we care about know it – by showing them or telling them how much they mean to us.”
o Janelle Hatch, a Registered Dietician working with the Healthy Schools Program, Island Health, emphasizes the essential connections with nature and with cultural practices and traditions, noting that cultural connections for children give them a sense of self and a knowledge of where they come from and where they belong. “Language, food, arts, and celebrations are all wonderful learning connections for classes of students. Ask you child’s teachers how you can support these learnings.”
Recommended resources attached to the article include:
· www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-danish-way “What the happiest people in the world know about raising confident, capable kids.”
· https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/how-to-help-families-and-staff-build-resilience-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/ “Think of resilience as a seesaw or balance scale, where negative experiences tip the scale toward bad outcomes, and positive experiences tip it toward good outcomes….The point where the scale balances is called the ‘fulcrum’, and if it is more to one side or the other, it can make it harder or easier to tip the resilience scale to the positive. Everyone’s fulcrum is in a different spot – which explains why each person is different in how easily we can counterbalance hardships in life. The good news is that the fulcrum can be moved by developing a toolkit of skills you can use to adapt and find solutions.” These skills include building relationships, reducing sources of stress, and strengthening core skills: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/three-early-childhood-development-principles-improve-child-family-outcomes/
· https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/guides-and-publications/raising-resilient-children Outlines Individual Factors, Family Factors, and Environmental Factors that are key to enhancing resilience in individuals, noting, “Everyone needs skills and supportive people in their lives to help cushion them from problems they may encounter. Introducing even a few positive elements into their lives can shift the balance and help many children and youth flourish.”