As a psychologist, I know that parents of struggling kids can sometimes feel powerless and worry about long-term stressors on their children. Although caregivers cannot always alter children’s circumstances or shield them from discomfort, they can offer a more enduring gift: tools to manage adversity.
We hear a lot about resilience, but what is it? To put it simply, resilience is the belief that while you cannot control everything in your life, there are many aspects you can control, including your attitude. Resilience works like a muscle we can build through effort and repetition, and we want to keep our muscles strong and flexible, so we can think of many ways to solve a problem.
Here are seven ways adults can help children cope with adversity and retain a hopeful outlook during challenging periods.
Leverage their interests
Fan the flames on children’s passions to give them a sense of purpose, a distraction from distress and a way to connect with like-minded peers. Does your child love the outdoors, could they go hiking? Are they creative, could they start an Etsy shop for their talents?
Focus on pacing and recovery
As a busy year progresses, many children (and their caregivers) are running on empty.
Help children assess their energy levels and prime them to understand what will refuel their tanks. Do they need time to escape into a novel? A reminder that this difficult time will not last forever. A break from social media? A mental health day? Help setting realistic goals or asserting their needs?
Some children may simply need reassurance that they are up to the challenge. Acknowledge small victories, even if it is just getting off the couch or making it through another day of school.
At the same time, recognise that no child (or adult) can always hold it together. Give your child the space and permission to, at times, fall apart. It is okay to cry or to be mad, and to then say goodbye to that feeling as it eventually passes.
Teach problem-solving skills
Draw on children’s interests to help them solve problems. You could use the STEPS approach, asking kids to state the problem, think of multiple solutions, explore the pros and cons of each option, and pick a solution and backup solution.
Help children anticipate stressful situations and how they might respond, whether it is getting cut from a team or rejected from a job. Feel free to use the analogy of going to the ice cream store and asking your child, “What if they’re out of your favourite ice cream? What are options B and C, and what are the pros of those, even if option A isn’t available?’ ” When kids use problem-solving skills, praise them for being flexible, despite disappointment.
Set brave goals
An important element of resilience is being able to identify a goal for yourself, to be able to tolerate the discomfort that is creating resistance toward that goal and — once you meet that goal — being able to celebrate it. Individualise kids’ brave goals.
Make time to reflect on progress toward their brave goals, and express gratitude and excitement when they meet them.
Identify what they can control
We cannot completely control the restrictions placed on us to keep us safe during the pandemic or missing out on playdates and school activities if we must enter snap lockdowns once again, or economic hardships of the family, but children are not helpless.
Start a dialogue about what children think they can and cannot control. Can they control their reaction if a friend says something negative? Can they make choices about what they do during their free time? Then convey that they have options and can be proactive. I suggest saying something to the effect of: “ ‘What is going well? What is not going well? If something is not going well, what thoughts, statements or actions might be helpful?’ ” Solving problems out loud models to children that there is more than one way to handle something.
Label difficult emotions
Many children have forgotten their go-to coping strategies now school is back. Saying to them, ‘You seem frustrated,’ or, ‘You look sad,’ can take the sting out of emotions and help them get to the problem-solving stage.
Encourage children to experiment with coping strategies, such as painting, writing in a journal, deep breathing, taking a walk or calling a friend. Afterward, have them rank their mood on a scale of one to 10. “If it’s a four, say, ‘What can we do to get you to a six?’ ”
Label your own emotions, too, and tell your child how you are going to manage them.
You do not want to burden them with adult emotions, but they are going to pick up on your distress whether you mention it or not. If you say, ‘I’m stressed about an issue at work, so I’m going to take a walk,’ then the kid knows, ‘Okay, mum and dad are stressed, but they’re taking care of themselves, so it’s going to be okay.’
Impart 'the power of and'
Validate that life can involve hardship and frustration, and help your child identify any skills or insights gained. This is not just positive thinking. It is ‘the power of and’ — acknowledging that two things can be true at the same time. If we are too positive, it can become an empty platitude. The ‘and’ addresses our instinct to dichotomise an experience and call it either good or bad.
To demonstrate that there is more to an experience than the pain we are experiencing, show your child a photograph, then zoom in on a specific detail. A discussion point is -If we only focus on this one part, does that mean the rest of it does not exist?
Even as you help children to live in a more realistic place with shades of grey, encourage them to hang on to moments of joy. We talk about resilience as bouncing back from hard times, but mental strength also is about living your best life when life is going well.