Raising Emotionally Resilient Children
Take time to reflect: Is our child emotionally resilient? How do we develop our child’s emotional resilience?
One will ask, what is emotional resilience? Emotional resilience is the ability of the child to adapt to adversity and stressful situations. All children will experience problems, feel discomfort and learn the results and consequences of their actions and decisions. Being resilient will help them to cope and respond well to life stresses.
Dr. Ginsburg has identified 7C’s of resilience:
- Competence – knowing they can handle a situation
- Confidence – believing in one’s own abilities
- Connection – establishing ties with family and community
- Character – developing a set of morals and values
- Contribution – realizing the importance of contributing to the world
- Coping – learning to cope
- Control – understanding that they can make a difference with their decisions.
Read more about Dr. Ginsburg 7C’s here.
In his article ‘How to Raise an Emotionally Resilient Child‘, Dr. Kenneth Barish highlighted the importance of parent helping the ’emotionally-injured’ child:
“These are critical moments in the emotional life of a child—when admired adults are able to help a sad, anxious or angry child realize that she will not always feel this way; when we help a child who is disappointed or discouraged regain some measure of confidence in her future. In these moments, we have strengthened her inner resources for coping with disappointment and distress, and built a foundation of optimism and resilience.”
He also recommended that parents spend about 10 minutes every day at bedtime for both parent and child to have a little talk:
“Because these moments are so important to children’s emotional health, I recommend that parents set aside some time every day (perhaps ten minutes at bedtime) for kids and parents to have a chance to talk, and use this time to repair moments of conflict and misunderstanding. This may be the most important ten minutes of a child’s day.”
And most importantly, our child must know that we love them and are proud of them,
“And we should let them know that, win or lose, we are proud of them for their effort. A child’s feeling that her parents are proud of her may be the deepest and most lasting emotional support we can offer—an anchor that sustains her in moments of anxiety and self-doubt.”