7 tips to increase the resilience of children
The concept of resilience It is not new, although currently this term is used more to speak of this incredible capacity of the human being. Resilience can be defined as the ability to face ourselves in an effective way to overcome adversities and failures, such as trauma, stressful situations, personal loss, etc.
It was not until 30 years ago that Boris Cyrulnik, French of Jewish origin, neurologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and author among other works of the book The ugly ducklings. Resilience: an unhappy childhood does not determine life, when this concept began to take on the importance it has today. This author began to study resilience from the personal experience of having suffered a very sad and unhappy childhood, especially after losing their parents when they were deported in World War II.
Factors that promote resilience
The factors that promote resilience They can be internal like having a fighting personality, being an active person, with the capacity to reflect, to love and to have confidence in people. But also, resilience generates external factors such as having a family or supportive tutors and a network of affective relationships of friends and classmates.
7 tips to strengthen children's resilience
The APA (American Psychological Association - American Psychology Association) has published on its website the Resilience guide for parents and teachers, in which it offers a series of recommendations for children and adolescents to learn to develop their resilience, bearing in mind that parents and teachers have an important role to help them foster it.
Some of the recommendations proposed by the APA to improve resilience are:
1. Establish social relationships
Help them to have good family and friends networks to give them support in possible disappointments or failures they have.
2. Self-care
If parents are a model of learning for their children in healthy eating habits, exercise, rest and have free time, etc. We will help them to control stress and keep them balanced.
3. Cultivate a positive self-image
Encourage them to remember past situations that they could overcome even with effort and difficulties. It is important to tell them that it is necessary to take their lives with humor and that sometimes they can laugh at themselves. Seeing the cases with perspective and positive attitude will allow them to advance in difficult moments.
4. Seeing things in a future perspective
When our children face a situation that causes them suffering, parents must teach them to see the problematic situation with a broader vision and that a future will surely be solved.
5. Accept that change is part of our life since we are born
Depending on the development of the child and the school stage in which he / she is, we must explain to them that our life is full of changes and that we must adapt to them.
6. Set goals
Children can learn to set reasonable and realistic goals to achieve them little by little. If these are difficult to achieve, once valued, we can change them for others that are easier, more affordable or more realistic.
7. Reinforce positive results
Parents should not forget to recognize and positively reinforce the appropriate results that our children achieve. Many times we focus only on recriminating the failures, without praising the achievements they are getting.
Of all the failures or difficult moments we can always get a "lesson" or learning. We must explain it to our children that in any situation we can extract the positive part that is sure to be there, trying to de-dramatize the situation.
Mercedes Corbella. Psychologist and diploma in Social Work.
It may interest you:
- Resilience, an antidote against adverse situations
- Four ways to improve your resilience, according to psychology
- Trauma: what can cause a trauma and why?
- Positive reinforcement in the face of child punishment
