You Can Do Hard Things
Dr. Austin shares her tips for helping children build resilience!
Whether it is the challenge of learning a new skill, peer or family conflict, a significant adverse life event, or anything in between, adversity is part of life. The easy response is to avoid or deflect. This prevents us and our kids from learning how to adapt and overcome challenges when they inevitably come again. Instead, focus on these tips to help build resilience in your children.
- Model calm. Show them you are on the same team. Acknowledge their feelings and teach them appropriate words and ways to deal with those feelings.
- Teach problem solving. Ask questions and help them come up with solutions vs fixing the problem for them or just telling them what to do.
- Let them try and fail within age and developmentally appropriate guardrails. Reinforce the ideas that failure is not a bad word and hard does not mean bad. Praise effort over outcome, talent, intelligence.
- Ensure you spend time having fun together without correction. This builds relational capital for the times you need to coach or correct. Build a village of supportive adults around them to increase connection and wise counsel.
Below are More Resources to Learn More:
Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8: Raising and Teaching Self-Motivated Learners
Raising Strong Kids - Parenting Great Kids with Dr. Meg Meeker
