Teaching resilience to children is pivotal in setting them up for a successful and happy life.
A longitudinal study in New Zealand followed 1,000 people from birth to 32 years to track their success in life (Moffitt et al., 2011). The study found that children were more likely to be in good health, making good life choices and were a lot happier if they were taught self-control skills as children.
What do self-control skills have to do with resilience?
Self-control is the ability to manage emotions, behaviour, words and actions especially when faced with difficult situations. Similarly, being resilient is having the ability to stop and think about a challenging situation and bounce back from it in a rapid and positive way. Those with strong resilience are in in control of their own thoughts and actions in response to adversity rather than reacting in a negative or destructive manner.
Why is it important to teach resilience?
Strengthening children’s resilience bolsters their self-confidence, encourages positive and productive interactions with others and benefits their overall mental health. They will be more likely to take risks, recover from failures and solve problems.
Learning how to cope with hardships while staying true and strong to oneself is a skill to be learned, not something innately born within us. As teachers, it is our responsibility to provide children with strategies to deal with difficult situations as they grow, so this skill grows with them and helps them become successful in life.
Below are 5 strategies you can use in the classroom to build resilience in the new generations (for the full 8 strategies and accompanying lessons, see my What it means to be resilient product on TPT):
1. Look for the bright side
Teaching our young ones to look for the positives is elemental in teaching self-control and resilience. Children will not dwell on difficult situations, instead searching for something to laugh or just smile at can help them change their mindset. They won't sweat the small stuff, because in comparison to the good in their lives, they know those little annoyances or setbacks will pass in time.
2. See no one as perfect
Perfect doesn't exist except in our own individual minds. It is productive to set high expectations and goals for yourself, but they need to be achievable and realistic. Children will learn that it's OK to make mistakes and that something new can always be learned from them. They will also realise that it is not reasonable to have expectations that others will be perfect, and to be forgiving of those who have made mistakes which have affected them in a negative way.
3. Speak and act fairly
Children aren't born with a filter from their thoughts to their mouths! So this is definitely a tough one to learn, and is elemental in building resilience. Thinking before you speak or act allows to you take a moment to consider the consequences of your words or actions in different situations. It helps children become aware of the power of words, how they can have a good or bad impact. They learn how to work towards the greater good, and how to navigate conflict and compromise.
4. Be the change
This strategy is all about taking responsibility for situations you have some (or a lot) of control over, and also accepting that you can’t change situations which you have no control over. It's easy for a child just to watch a disagreement and remain a passive observer, but if they want to practise making changes in the world they need to learn how to be assertive in a calm, self-assured manner. This often takes courage, and pushes the child out of their comfort zone in a positive way.
5. Find authenticity
It shows great strength and resilience when you can listen to a new concept or set of facts and suddenly realise "Oh, I've had it wrong." Except instead of keeping this information to yourself to save pride, you say it humbly aloud. Finding authenticity means looking at all the facts and being open-minded to changing preconceived ideas. Children will also understand - by looking at all the facts and perspectives - that they can make a bad situation worse for themselves and others if they react irrationally or without this awareness.
References
Moffitt, T. E. et al. A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 2693–2698 (2011).
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