How do we equip our young people with the skills to cope with adversity?
It was with a heavy heart that I entered my daughter’s bedroom recently. The news I had to break to her had weighed on me for hours. How could I tell her she hadn’t attained the goal she’d worked so hard for and prized so highly?
At the time, I thought this would be a story of anguish for my daughter. It turned out to be a vital parenting lesson for me. It was a lesson that liberated me from a dissonance many parents struggle with.
My daughter loves swimming. And she’s good at it. And her best friends are good at it. For them, swimming has become a bonding experience, an exploration of friendship and self.
Several months ago, she set herself the goal of making the school swim team. Being petite and almost a year younger than most of the other girls, she knew she’d have to outwork the others if she was to stand a chance. But she was adamant she wanted to try.
And try, she did. She went to every training session with the swim squad. She also trained outside the swim squad with a specialist coach. At the training, she was focused and put in the effort.
But she didn’t quite make it. And I had to tell her she didn’t make it. (In case you’re wondering, four from 14 were selected. My daughter was fifth, by a hair.)
The start of the conversation was difficult. There were tears (some were hers, some were mine). But we got to the other side. Having settled down from the initial shock of the news, she looked at me through teary eyes and asked, “Mum, can I still try to make the team next year?”
Now, I’m often proud of my daughter. But at this moment, my heart expanded. I was amazed by her resilience and determination. How easy it would have been for her to close down. To think all the effort was for nothing. That nothing is worth working hard for.
But she didn’t. She rose up. She immediately wanted to start working again toward her goal.
This got me thinking. How did she get to this point? How did she become this resilient?
As a psychologist, I frequently help parents reframe any setbacks their children experience and teach them to use these experiences as growth opportunities. If it were not for adversity, resilience would not be required; in times of adversity, opportunities for resilience-building present themselves.
To explain resilience, the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University puts forth the metaphor of a set of scales. On one side of the scale is adversity. On the other, counterbalancing adversity, are adaptive skills. Some level of adversity in life is inevitable. Resilience is when the scales are tipped favourably, even when a significant load is stacked on the negative side. The balance of these scales, particularly in childhood, can be a strong predictor for life outcomes.
“The thing that makes the biggest difference, over and above one’s genetic blueprint, is the relationship a child has with a primary caregiver,” says Philip Fisher, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon who studies early childhood interventions. In short, parenting matters. What we model and teach our kids and teens is fundamental to the people they become.
Reflecting on how my daughter got to this point in her resilience journey, here are six strategies you can use to assist your child in building resilience:
- Openly discuss challenges. It can feel natural to hide your challenges from your kids, pretending things are always good, even when they’re not. However, kids sense when there are issues anyway; by watching you maturely deal with challenges in the open, they learn how to cope with adversity (and that struggles are normal) and can model your behaviour when they experience challenges themselves.
- Help them regulate their emotions. When someone controls their feelings, it’s called self-regulation. However, kids have not yet developed the ability to self-regulate. However, you can assist them to regulate through co-regulation – by connecting with your children in their emotions and helping them work through them.
- Reframe challenging situations. Help your child to view adverse events more positively. This changes how they respond to these events. Dwelling on an adverse event contributes to its impact. Reframing the same event by seeking out a positive aspect, or framing it as a challenge or a learning opportunity can entirely change the event’s effect.
- Take a realistic view. Being overly optimistic or pessimistic can contribute to stress. Extreme optimism can make us feel disheartened when things don’t go as hoped. Pessimism can be disempowering. By helping your child maintain a realistic view, they can pragmatically deal with any adverse circumstances.
- Provide emotional support. Remember, even adults struggle with their emotional regulation. Kids need support for comfort, as well as to extract the learning from adverse circumstances. Helping your child to be more resilient requires you to be more consciously present and purposeful.
- Scaffold. Kids will inevitably face adversity. Utilising the approaches above will help them build their ‘resilience muscles’. By equipping our young people with the capabilities to overcome challenges, we allow them to increase their resilience over time.
Resilience is a crucial skill for young people to develop and one of the strongest indicators of childhood outcomes. We cannot anticipate what adversities our kids will face – only that resilience will most surely be required.
One of the ultimate ironies of parenting is that we want to shield our kids from adversity, yet being able to deal with adversity is one of life’s most essential skills. I had struggled with this dissonance from the day my daughter was born. How can I simultaneously safeguard her from hurt yet prepare her for the inevitable struggles she will experience throughout life?
This experience taught me that we need to accept that each of our journeys will serve up adversity despite our efforts. We need to use these tough moments as learning opportunities. Our most important role is in building our kids’ capacity to cope with adversity, rather than trying to have them avoid inevitable challenges.
