Resilience – A Valuable skill that Parents can Nurture and Develop Early in Children

Womenlines takes pleasure to welcome guest contributor Vijayalakshmi Veluchamy, founder, Public speaking mentor @ Jump Out Kids – a venture in building a confident next generation. She is also a Senior Recruitment Consultant by profession. This month Vijaya is sharing insights about how to raise resilient kids-

Resilience is considered as the ability of a substance to spring back to its original shape, that’s its basic definition, so rephrasing it, resilience in human beings is considered the ability of an individual to bounce back from a failure or any difficult life event. The faster the individual can bounce back, the greater his resilience.

The good news is that resilience is a skill and not something that we are born with. We learn it gradually through various life experiences. Children naturally develop resilience as they grow, so as parents all we need to do is to help them nurture and build the skill and make it one of their strongest asset.

Few ways of helping kids build strong resilience:

Emotional Connection:

Vital coping skills are developed well by children when they have at least one strong reliable, loving, caring relationship in the family. Frequent one to one talks, the undivided, uninterrupted, gadget free time spent with children plays an important role in building these emotional connections.

Encouraging healthy risk taking:

Encouraging kids to take up age appropriate, healthy risk activities which has minimal harm when unsuccessful, helps them push their comfort zone. It also helps them internalize the fact that they are strong enough to take up challenges and venture outside their comfort zone.

Avoid jumping in, to resolve their hurdles:

The natural instinct of a parent is to jump in and clear the hurdles of the child. We need to resist this urge because kids need to experience that little discomfort. Also in such situations, instead of advising and giving instant solutions the best way would be to put questions back to them to let them find their own way. Resolving the hurdle with their own solution builds tremendous confidence.

Letting them know its ok to ask for help:

Rugged courageousness is not what we want to build in them, they need to be taught that being brave is knowing when to ask for help. So, we need to strike a balance between letting them do what they can do themselves and be there when help is needed.

Optimism:

Optimism is the most significant characteristic of resilient people. Hence its essential to nurture optimism in kids. When kids take up healthy risks we also need to teach them to embrace failures. Instead of getting caught in the consequence, we help them understand that each experience has some good take away. Resilience is all about getting up, dusting yourself and trying again with a positive mindset.

Being their Model

Most importantly, model resiliency and let them see how you handle sadness, failure and disappointment. Show rather than tell. By doing this, they gradually understand that these feelings are a part of life and can be dealt with gracefully. While nurturing resilience, we always need to keep in mind that the most important ingredient is lots of unconditional love and a strong assurance that we are always there when they need us