Resilience

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The recent fires in Los Angeles (not far from where I live) have me thinking a lot about resilience. As I hear more and more stories of families who are displaced, who have lost their homes, I’m overwhelmed by thoughts of the resilience that these individuals, families, and communities will need in order to recover.

When we experience adversity, it’s almost like we’re being forged in a fire to become stronger and more beautiful. 

So as parents, how can we develop resilience in our kids so that they can overcome adversity and hard things throughout their lives? 

Preventing Pain

We want our children to face disappointment with bravery, courage, and strength. But at the same time, we often try to prevent them from ever experiencing hardship.

When your kid is struggling, you might feel guilty because you see their discomfort as a kind of failure on your part. Try shifting your thinking to, “Hard things are gonna be inevitable, and my job is not necessarily to prevent those things. My job is to equip my child so that they are able to experience pain, discomfort, and hardship, and overcome it so that they become more and more resilient.”

Another big reason why parents don’t like their kids to experience hardship is because they feel ill-equipped to deal with their child’s big feelings (and the crying and complaining that come with it). Parents even fear that going through hard things will “break” their kids. 

The truth is, humans aren’t actually that breakable. And you can’t prevent your kids from ever getting hurt or going through tough things. Even if you did it “perfectly”, it is impossible to stop anything bad from ever happening to your child. And you’ll burn yourself out in the process.

Kids are going to face challenges from potty training accidents to not getting into the college of their choice and many, many experiences in between. Life is filled with beauty and pain and loss. Hard things and really beautiful things. 

In fact, you don’t really even want to protect your kids from all hardship. Preventing problems (or trying to) creates a different set of problems. It’s important for our kids to experience small disappointments so that they feel confident in their ability to overcome those hard things. Give them your support, care, and love through tough times. 

Resilience is really all about this internal belief that’ “I'm okay. I can handle it. I'm good enough. I can figure things out.” It's a mindset that comes from the inside.

If you let your kids go through little hardships as they age - struggling to put on their shoes, going back up to the bedroom and remaking their bed, losing their water bottle and having to pay $10 to buy a new one - it will give them that inner belief that they can handle it.

Building Resilience

It’s natural for big feelings to come along with a difficult or uncomfortable situation. Processing feelings allows us to overcome them. 

When you give your kids space to cry, to grieve, to be sad, mad, hurt, frustrated, or afraid, their nervous system will find its way back to equanimity, balance, and calm. You can give them the tools to process those negative emotions.

Don’t rush to problem solving or finding the silver lining. Building resilience really comes from allowing the pain, hurt, sadness, anger, or frustration to be fully digested and processed by the nervous system. Trust that your child can handle those feelings. 

If it seems that your kid is getting stuck in the big feeling cycle, suggest a short break to take a walk or have a snack. You can also put boundaries around their processing. For example, “I'm happy to talk to you more about the sad thing that happened tomorrow. Right now, it's time for bed.”

Allow time for them to get through some of their emotions, and then guide them as they learn to solve their own problems. Give them the idea that they have the answer inside of them. Start to offer some solutions, but in a way that makes them think.

You can help bring it out by asking really good questions:

• Why do you think that happened? 
• What do you want to do next? 
• What would be the best solution for you? 
• How do you want to handle this? 
• Do you want to try…?

For example, if your kid gets cut from the baseball team, what can they do to get better and make the team next season? Encourage them to keep working at it, and let them know it’s not over. They can work at getting the grades they want. They can work at getting a friendship back. They can work at getting privileges back that they’ve lost.

Let them know that, no matter what happened, they’re safe and they are okay exactly as they are. They can always try again. 

You also want to remind them that they are separate from the circumstance. Your kid is not a bad person because they made a mistake or didn’t make the team or got a bad grade or didn’t get invited to a birthday party. Those external circumstances don't mean as much as what's going on inside. We can be sad about things that happen on the outside, but it doesn't define who we are.

Tell them, “You're gonna fail. You're gonna make mistakes. Things are gonna be hard. Some days are gonna be great. Some days are gonna be crappy. And I'm not worried about you. You will figure out how to grow up and to be strong and become the person you're meant to be.”

In order to help your kid develop resilience, help them feel their feelings, problem solve, try again and continue building that inner belief that they're okay exactly as they are.

When a problem is presented to them, they will be able to say, “Okay. I can handle this.” And that is everything. 

Whatever is hard for you right now, let yourself feel all the feelings, and then wait. The solutions will come. Your brain will draw you toward them. You will figure it out. 

You’ll Learn:

What resilience is and why it’s so important to start practicing at a young age

Why parents try to prevent pain for the kids (and why we shouldn’t)

3 strategies for helping your child build resilience

Previous Episodes:

• Episode 153: My Parenting Regrets
• Episode 94: Social Engineering in Parenting with Jennifer Delliquadri