Billy is on the playground. He tries the monkey bars, but it hurts his hands. He cries for a minute, then walks away with his head down while another kid laughs at his expense. Next time he’s there, he tells himself not to try again. No sense getting his hands and his ego both hurt.
Chrissy’s parents are getting divorced. The fear of the future lookng different, combined with grief for the family she thought would always look the same, have paralyzed her. She doesn’t want to get out of bed, but isn’t even sure why, let alone how to “fix” her “attitude”.
Joy struggles in math. She is hesitant to ask for help, embarassed that her classmates have figured her secret out. So she pretends to be sick on the day of her test, even though she will have to take it sooner or later, at least she can put it off one more day.
What’s a parent to do?
Stress and anxiety aren’t just for adults. Our children face scenarios that challenge them on the daily — physically, emotionally, and relationally. Some kids seem to have the ability to press on in spite of challenges: to look the figurative monkey bars square in the face and determine to conquer. Others are easily beaten down by their trials and struggle to cope. This doesn’t make them weak. That is a point to be repeated. Children’s brains are still developing and learning. They only learned how to use words instead of tears a couple short years ago. How could they possess the problem-solving skills they need to navigate the tumultuous waters of grief, stress, and anxiety?
Building resilience in our kids takes time, and they learn best from our example and our presence. As adults we don’t like to feel alone in our problems and pains, neither do children. As much as we desire to give them what they need when we see them struggling, we become awkward and lost sometimes when handling the really heavy stuff. We don’t want to drop the heavy things — we don’t want to break their hearts.
Caring about them yet feeling unsure and insecure about how to help, what to say, what not to say, can lead to inaction. It’s not that we don’t want to help, we aren’t sure what to say or do, so we freeze. Sometimes this amounts to acting like nothing is wrong. Sometimes it sounds like, “Why are you so mopey these days?” Sometimes it looks like being too busy. Our own feelings can be wounded when our child acts out hard emotions, and we might feel like backing down. It may look like that’s what the child wants. It’s not.
What is resilience?
Resilience is best described as the art of getting back up! What do you dobefore a sales pitch that helps you think straight even though you feel nervous? What does a professional athlete do before a big game to maximise performance? What allows you to smile, help and be present when you visit someone in the hospital without allowing your worry to overpower the conversation? How do you simmer down after a hard conversation or conflict so it doesn’t play on repeat in your head for the next week? That’s resilience.
We all know that we never calm down by being told, “Calm down!” or relax when we hear, “Relax, will ya?” The words “It’s okay,” don’t always make us sure that it is okay. Sometimes we just feel deep down inside that something is not right. We don’t feel safe.
When our children experience this, they often struggle to find the words to name what their emotions are telling them. They know something’s “not okay,” but they sometimes think that means with them. Life experience teaches us that hard times come and go, that life ebbs and flows like waves washing over the sand.Kids simply haven’t been around that long, so they wonder why they feel that way, they get angry with themselves, they want it to just go away. Children need to know, they can chase the scaries away. They can find the rainbow, even before the storm passes.
Here are a few suggestions on how to build those skills in our children.
Ways to Strengthen Resilience in Kids
Listen, without fixing. This one is easier said than done. It’s natural to want to solve our children’s problems and point them in the right direction, but when we do they lose confidence. Sometimes through speaking their situation out loud to empathetic ears, a little light breaks through. Getting it all out in the open can be a great silencer of that negative voice that says, “it can’t be solved. It will never get better.” We MUST silence that voice first, before they can listen to us or to their good hearts telling them the right thing.
Strong relationships with adults: Studies have revealed that when a child has at least one trusting and secure bond with an adult they feel safe around — but the more the better — that relationship has the power to lower their stress levels and strengthen their resolve to keep trying. This is where you come in, moms and dads, grandmas, aunts, uncles, granddads! Walk with them, sit with them, play and laugh with them, hug them and remind them they matter to you. Just the knowledge that someone is there if they need you goes a very long way.
Let them leap (cover your eyes if you have to)! We learn what we’re made of when we push our limits. Kids do this naturally — climbing trees, jumping from progressively higher structures — they can give a parent a thousand mini heart attacks before they’re even in elementary school! And we say, “Stop! It’s not safe!” with the very best intentions to protect their little craniums. Allow them to push themselves, it’s how they learn they can fly. I mean this within reason, of course, but even so. The faith they gain in themselves is a source of great courage and resilience, when they know that they know that they CAN do hard things after all! It’s even worth that little gasp we take when they climb a little too high!
Give mistakes a big hug. Embrace them, that is. Mistakes are how we learn. We make as many of them as our kids do, they just change as we get older. Give yourself and your children grace in those moments. Let the driving question not be “Whose fault was it?” but instead, “What did we learn from it?”
Give them a road map for feelings. Children have BIG feelings, but aren’t always sure what they’re feeling. Kids also tend to label feelings as “good” or “bad.” That labeling can cause them to feel guilty or like something’s wrong with them when they can’t quickly shake off grief or anger. That can feel like carrying around a big sack of rocks, with more rocks piling in faster than they can throw them out. It’s up to us to teach our children that each emotion has a place and time. Our feelings tell us what we need so we can take care of ourselves, there are no “bad” ones. Some aren’t so fun, but we need them all. Teaching kids to name them can go a long way to empower them to meet the needs that are expressed in those emotions — the need may be a hug, a break, a reconciliation, a little grace, the list goes on. This takes a lot of patience, because while we are trying to map out the emotion and the path to healing, the child is a little tornado swirling with emotion they can’t express. Be their calm in the storm, work through it with them. Listening is your valuable tool here, you can decode them through their actions when they don’t know what to say.
Soak up the sun! Big feelings can make us live inside our head. Get into your body and help them get into theirs. Take a walk, sign up for sports, go to the park. There is no bad weather, only the wrong clothes! Put on a rain coat and splash around. Put on a knit cap and gloves and throw snowballs. Not only does the sun’s natural brightness make us feel a little brighter, we really can stomp and run and shake off a lot of tough emotions. Getting that blood pumping through our hands and feet and brain just makes some situations come clearer. Even if the probem isn’t gone, we feel more in control after good old fashioned motion. Because we are moving forward — we are not stuck!
Resilience is contagious. Breathe it out and in, exude it. Surround yourself and your children with it. Like anything, this becomes easier with practice. If you look at a problem asking, “How can I solve this?” your children notice. If you look at a bad day and say, “Well the good thing about this day is…” your children will hear. If you aren’t afraid to say, “Well, that was a mistake, but next time I will…” your kids won’t be afraid to either.
Hold on tight! Good old fashioned grit, the ability to grab on for dear life and push through, comes from hope. Hope grows in the fertile soil of a soul that survives. Just like the daisies in my yard survive every winter and burst through again in the spring, and it seems like the cold that should kill them only multiplies them, that is hope inside the human spirit. We have survived hard things before, we know we can do it again. That confident assurance is what we pass to our children. It may be the greatest skill we can pass to them.
Grab on to your hope and hold on tight while the wind rages around, you will in the end survive the storm and stand again on solid ground.
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