Building Resilience in Children - Techniques and Methods

Strategies and techniques for resilience could be deployed over time and in small increments to enforce learning process. Positive thinking and character building are the two important poles for teaching resilience in children. Resilience is a package of meaningful practices. These practices attempt to train your children in a series of techniques and methods. Dr. Ginsberg was the pioneer researcher in the field of resilience in children. She recommends a series of techniques to train your children. Here are some of them:

Competence means knowing with certainty that you can manage a situation in an effective manner. Competence is the inbuilt ability to handle any given situation with courage and grit. You can help your children develop competence by using the following techniques:

Assist your children to identify their strengths and weaknesses. They should know the areas and fields where they can excel and perform well. Help them find out whether they are committing any mistakes. They should also learn how not to commit the same mistakes again in future. Allow your children to make their own decisions because it will help them learn responsibilities and understand how freedom to think alone could help them find solutions to problems.

Self-confidence is the precursor to develop self-esteem in children. Understanding oneself is the most critical issue for success in life. Parents could help their children develop self-confidence in numerous ways. When the children are competent, they will develop confidence automatically. When children learn how to confident, they will also develop self-resilience. The best technique to learn how to gain confidence is to achieve perfection in what one is doing. When your child gets very good marks in a difficult subject, they will develop the necessary confidence to perform better in the next test.

Developing a network of friends and asking children to keep in touch with them

Good friends are like mentors. They are ready to help anyone who is in problem. A social network of good friends is an absolute necessity. You should help your children in creating a small social network of like-minded friends. Children should develop close ties with their friends, peers, teachers and relatives to understand how companionship will help them solve many problems. With a good network of friends, children will experience empathy, sympathy and helpful nature. This cooperative attitude will come to use in the future when your children face some adverse situations.

Life's challenges are easy to overcome when you learn how to handle and manage them. In other words, coping with stress will help you develop tenacity and resilience. This principle works for your children too. Positive coping is a character of confronting stressful situations with a deft hand. You may want to train your children for positive coping methods. Stopping negative behavior is another useful strategy to counter stressful situation.

When serious situations arise in one's life, the first thing that he or she does is to display intense emotions that are often uncontrollable. Uncontrolled emotions are always dangerous to life. When children become intensively emotional, they tend to lose their power of rational thinking. This will eventually lead to additional stress and pressure. Children should learn how to control their thoughts. You may want to tell your children that life could pose stiff challenges at time and they should be ready to manage them effectively.

Here are some simple strategies and plans to train your children for resiliency:

Helping children to identify their feelings and emotions

Power words: “I understand how you feel when I am gone to office for my work. Anyway, I will be here very soon, before you do your project work. Please wait until I come back”

Power words: “I forgot to tell you! I will not be coming to school to pick you up. Instead, I will send someone to pick you up”

Power words: “I know the difficulties in taking the math test. However, I am sure that you will do well when you study hard”

Power words: “Why don't you invite your friends to a weekend party? Alternatively, you can even go to your friend's party for the next weekend.”

Power Words: “Problems are common in your lives. Please let me know if you have any problems. I will help you if you have any genuine problems.”

Power words: “Come what may, you should try to face all the problems with courage and conviction.”

Resiliency is a survival tool for the modern world. Children, who are resilient and tenacious, can easily learn how to face any advertise of life that are most likely occur from time to time.

A Parent's Guide to Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Your Child Roots and Wings
By Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg

Today's children face a great deal of stress - academic performance, heavy scheduling, high achievement standards, media messages, peer pressures, family tension. Without healthier solutions, they often cope by talking back, giving up, or indulging in unhealthy behaviors.

Show your child how to bounce back - and THRIVE - with coping strategies from one of the nation's foremost experts in adolescent medicine. This 7-C plan for resilience that helps kids of all ages learn competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control to help them bounce back from challenges.