Building Resilient Children

All students will experience difficult situations at some point in their life, both academic and social. For children in the later years of primary school, some common sources of stress are teasing and bullying, conflict with teachers or parents, competition with peers, homework, tests and class presentations, and the transition to high school. So how can we as parents/caregivers and educators work together?

Below is some advice taken from an article published on 'The Education Hub' website.  

Students need support when dealing with adversity or stress, they need to know how to adapt to certain situations and stave off the potential negative psychological effects of challenging experiences. Resilience involves more than continuing to persist despite the difficulty. 

Resilient students interpret academic or social challenges in a positive way.

So how can we help our children develop their ability to be more resilient?

•Teach children not to exaggerate problems or jump to conclusions but to look on the bright side of things and laugh at their mistakes. Find positive meaning in obstacles. Help students to normalise, rather than personalise or catastrophise, stressful events. 

• Practise using positive self-talk using scripts, and practise using humour. Greater levels of humour are associated with more positive self-concept and higher levels of self-esteem, and more positive responses to both positive and negative life events. 

• Ask children “What are you saying to yourself?” and “What are you thinking inside your head?”, and if necessary, help them to reframe these thoughts. Teach students to think “What’s wrong with this situation?”, not “What’s wrong with me?” or “Why me?”. 

• Encourage students to check their initial response to a problem, to ensure they have a realistic perception of the issues. You might ask them to consider who is actually responsible, and how much responsibility is really theirs. 

• Help them come to realise that most stresses are not entirely the result of one person’s failings or actions. 

• Also ask them to consider if the issue is going to last forever – can they see an end to the stress? Most stresses are temporary.