Building resilience in children is so important but can be tricky, so here are my 3 top tips for helping your child.
1. Encourage Your Child Not to 'Give Up'
If your child joins a new club – let’s say football – finds it difficult, and then gives up straight away. It goes without saying that they won’t get a chance to improve. It can be a good idea to agree a time frame with your child beforehand, perhaps give it a go for a term or a few months so they have a chance to feel that sense of joy and satisfaction when they have worked hard and progressed/achieved something great.
2. Let Your Child Fail
Perfectionism and fear of failure are risk factors for young people developing a sense that they are not good enough. No child can win the gymnastics competition every time or be top of the class in every assessment. It’s unhealthy not to be experienced in coping with failure. Failure can become something to be feared and to be ashamed of. Fear of failure can be a significant problem that can create stress and anxiety disorders. Talk openingly about the importance of failure and how useful it can be - every successful inventor has failed along the way, but each failure has helped them work out the path to success!
3. Let Your Child Experience Difficult Emotions
Building resilience in children involves allowing them to experience that tough situation, leading to difficult emotions, not rescuing them from it. In the face of adversity, this allows the child to realise, “I can cope with this feeling”. Losing at a game can be hard to handle but having a learned response can be a helpful way of coping with the emotion, for example, always shaking the winner's hand and saying 'good game' can help show others that you're a team player and fun to play with.
If you have any concerns about your child's learning, please get in touch, I'd love to help.
25 years experience, PVG, GTC Reg'd Awarded 'Recognition of Additional Support Needs' by The General Teaching Council Rated 5-stars ⭐️ Free 15-min consultations
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