Building Resilience in Children
By Shaun Ditty, LPC
Teaching resilience is hard—but by letting kids face challenges and guiding them with the right stories, we help them grow stronger for life’s inevitable setbacks.
Perhaps one of the most important skills a person can learn is how to try again after facing defeat.
Ironically, I also find this to be one of the most challenging skills we as adults caring for children
have to allow them to learn. It is undeniably painful to watch a child work through challenging
times and it is in our nature as care providers to fix things for our kids. While I certainly do not en-
joy seeing a child work so hard at something only to see them not succeed, I do try to remind myself
that I’m not witnessing failure but rather I’m fostering resilience and witnessing growth.
Unfortunately we all know that failing at things, or at the very least not getting the outcome we ex-
pected, is not something we can shield our children from as it is in fact a part of life. Therefore, it is
important that we work to prepare our children for these moments. The funny thing is that despite
resilience being something we all need to learn to excel at, we often don’t do much in the way of
building that skill except for when we find ourselves in the midst of needing the skill.
It’s incredibly challenging, if not impossible to adequately learn this skill while needing to use it.
See, the thing is the situations that require us to use resilience are often uncomfortable, challeng-
ing, and not typically something we enjoy talking about. But it is imperative that we discuss these
things with our children. The questions now become, how do I bring it up? What do I say? Luckily
the kind folks at understood.org have created a list of books that you can read with your child that
cover this very topic.
Reading with your child is a wonderful way to bond, create opportunities for organic conversations,
and gain insight into your child’s thoughts and experiences. The list varies from picture books all
the way to memoirs. I encourage you to check out the list of books linked and consider read-
ing through some with your child.
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