The idea of fostering “Resilient Children” is a hot topic right now, and for such a seemingly simple concept, it’s actually a complicated and many-layered issue. Perhaps one of the best ways to understand ‘resilience’ is as our human capacity to “bounce-back” from difficulty or adversity in our lives—it’s a pattern of positive adaptation.
Here are a few things you can do to promote resiliency:
1) It seems obvious but the first thing that you can do is create a loving, supportive and communicative home environment for your family. This means being demonstrative of your affection, open and approachable to talk about ANYTHING, and encouraging of your child’s endeavours. It is also very important for your child to feel safe at home, and to spend time together as a family.
2) Set clear boundaries and rules with real consequences, and monitor (but don’t hover over) your child’s whereabouts. Trust them to do things on their own but show them that you care deeply about where they are, who they’re with, and what they’re doing. Part of resiliency is allowing our children to learn from their mistakes—we can’t expect to have independent problem-solvers if we are always fixing things for our kids. But our children do need to know that somewhere, someone is thinking about them and loves them, and that they have responsibilities to these other people in their lives.
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