Resilience and perseverance are essential traits for children to develop. They are life skills that children take into adulthood and can affect how they grow up.

Building resilience and perseverance in your child is important for their mental health as well as their physical health. It helps them to overcome obstacles more easily and reduces the chances of developing anxiety or other stress-related diseases.

Here are some tips you can use to help your child build resilience and perseverance:

  1. Building supportive relationships

The reliable presence of at least one supportive relationship can help lead your child through adversity. Your child will learn to develop vital coping skills and your presence can also help to reduce any changes that are activated by stress. This can prevent any damaging physiological effects on their developing brain, body, and immune system.3 Children learn better when they are loved, accepted, and understood.

  1. Encourage and support self-regulation

Self-regulation refers to how we regulate our behaviours and emotions. It is extremely beneficial in the long run for your child to learn how to manage their behaviours from a young age. It is important to talk to your child about their behaviours to help develop their understanding — what is the impact of their behaviour on others, what are the benefits? It will also help them to regulate any stress-induced anger or frustration they might feel in challenging situations.4

  1. Encourage regular mindfulness practice

Mindfulness creates structural and functional changes to the brain that can help regulate stress. It has a great positive impact on children’s, and adults’, cognitive development. There are numerous life skills that your child can develop when practising mindfulness and these skills can help build perseverance and resilience. You can read more about mindfulness and find exercises here.

  1. Read to them, or let them read good books

Children are more perceptive than we give them credit for. They can infer and learn from the stories they read. Here are a few books that share stories about problem-solving, self-regulation, and perseverance1:

  1. Engage in risky play

Risky play is thrilling and a perfect challenge for children to test their limits and build perseverance. It can also help your child develop risk management as they figure out boundaries and develop perseverance.1 Take your child to the playground, bring them hiking, let them play in nature. It is important that you don’t let your fear get in the way. Let your child take risks and learn from them. Experts suggest practicing the 17-second rule — i.e., instead of telling your child not to run too fast or climb too high, take a moment (or 17-seconds). Step back and observe how your child is responding to the situation so you can have a better sense of what they are capable of.5

  1. Set an example

Like many other life skills, modelling resilience and perseverance is beneficial for your child. They are more than likely to learn from watching you persevere through a problem you are facing. If it’s an appropriate discussion, share with them what you’re going through and what you’re doing to get through the problem. Studies have shown that showing persistence and perseverance yourself can affect how much your child perseveres through their tasks.1

Child-led learning is effective in developing resilience and perseverance

Resilience and perseverance are skills that can’t only be taught verbally. Your child will have to go through challenges and sometimes tough situations in order to develop these skills. By being in challenging situations, they will not only develop perseverance and resilience but also learn to problem-solve and manage risk.

If you enjoyed this week’s blog, and would like to find out more about encouraging resilience and perseverance in your child, head over to Piptree Kids to check out the full post!

References

  1. Arnerich, M. How to Build Resilience and Perseverance in Young Children. (Link)
  2. Bobbermen, J. Why building resilience in children is important. (Link)
  3. Young, K. Building Resilience in Children — 20 Practical, Powerful Strategies. (Link)
  4. Cowley, S. How to Build Better Behaviours in the Early Years. (Link)
  5. Toole, B. Risky Play for Children: Why We Should Let Kids Go Outside and then Get Out of The Way. (Link)
2 Jul, 2020 / 0 Comments