Chapter 2 – Parenting Advice – Raising Resilient Children

Building Personal Resilience: A Guide to Positive Living

Chapter 2 – Parenting Advice – Raising Resilient Children 

Child Therapy Ottawa

Most children by nature are happy and buoyant. When a child has become unhappy, reserved and withdrawn, or alternatively, angry and aggressive for an extended period, such as longer than a week, it is very important that parents try to find out what is wrong. Because children have limited words to express their feelings often parents find themselves asking questions that the child cannot answer. Sometimes parents can figure out what is troubling the child by listening in on the child’s play activities or discussing a drawing made by the child. Also, parents can discuss the changes they see in their child with the child’s teacher and childcare provider. However, if the parent cannot discover the source of the child’s change of mood and behaviour, and if it continues over weeks, it is important to consult a child psychologist. The psychologist can undertake an assessment of the child and provide the parent with feedback and encouraging new methods of helping the child. Psychologists work with the parents in a collaborative way for the best interest of the children. Also, there may be times when having the child see the psychologist for play therapy, social skills development and communication skills development helps the child enormously and prevents the development of psychological problems later in life.

In this chapter

Raising our children can be one of the most exciting and challenging experiences of our lives. This chapter takes us through the wondrous journey of life as a parent, from the earliest stage when our children are mere babies to the later stages of when they reach teenagehood and adolescence. Each stage has its own unique growth pattern, be it physical, social, emotional or intellectual, and at each stage we as parents are both students and teachers as we live life with our children and help build their resilience which is a major task for all parents and a major achievement for all children. There are many gems of insight and advice in this chapter which Dr. Davies has written based on her years of experience as a psychologist and a parent. And where and when problems are still too much, a psychologist can help. In your reading you will discover for example that the growth and development of a resilient child is intertwined with the growth and development of resilience in ourselves. In effect, we both give and we receive, we touch and are touched, we teach and we are taught.

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About the Author

Read more about the author of this chapter, Dr. Karen Davies of Gilmour Psychological Services® in Ottawa.

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Parenting Role in Raising Resilient Children


Our children are born, and we are immediately launched on one of the most exciting, challenging and long-lasting adventures of our lives. Along with those parts of this adventure that we can anticipate, plan for, and predict in advance, are the countless experiences and events that life just brings our way. As parents, we are immediately granted both the privilege and the responsibility of guiding our children, from the first moments of their lives, over the next 18-20 years, through this adventure of growing up.


What can we do as parents to ensure that our children have the best possible start in their lives, and to best prepare them for the whole range of life experiences that they will encounter as they grow up? In this chapter, it is my wish to share with you some of what I have learned and experienced, both professionally and personally, about one of the most challenging and rewarding of adult life experiences – raising our children.


Soon after our children arrive, we are inundated with vast quantities of information about loving, bathing, feeding, diapering and generally taking care of our babies. For some of us, we're too tired to remember most of this information on the first go-round, so we pile up all the booklets and pamphlets on our bedside tables and try to make sense of the many words of wisdom and information in those few spare moments of peace and quiet that we come to treasure!


Of course, we must immediately begin to learn about the second-by-second realities of parenting from direct trial and error as our babies need to be fed, bathed, changed and loved from the moment they are born, and they cannot wait until we've figured it all out! Fortunately, our children are very patient learners, and we have time to learn with them. In fact, just as our children grow and develop over the course of their lives, we also grow and develop as their parents.


Personally, I've always been very grateful for the fact that we don't have to get it all right, all at once. Without a doubt, parenting is a big job. It is one of the most demanding and most important jobs that many of us will do in our lives, and it is only reasonable to expect that we will need time and experience, and sometimes a little help along the way, to develop our own best parenting styles and skills.


Even with time, experience and a little help, we are bound to make mistakes, sometimes lots of them! We need to learn to be forgiving of ourselves for the mistakes that we make, and to use these mistakes as opportunities to learn something new about ourselves and our children. The more resilient that we are able to help our children to be, the more easily they too can live with (and learn from) our mistakes.


All parents begin the adventure of parenting wanting the very best for their children. Ideally, we try to create the best physical and emotional environment possible for our children, one that allows our children to grow physically strong, and emotionally resilient.

What is a Resilient Child?


One who bounces back!! In the simplest of terms, resilient children are children who ‘bounce back’. We often remark as adults how fast children seem to be able to recover from physical injury or illness. As adults, we all know that the complete healing of a badly sprained ankle or a broken arm can take weeks, months, or sometimes even years before we really feel that things are back to normal.


Many of us have been amazed at just how fast a child can heal from similar injuries. Children seem to be naturally more physically resilient -- they bounce back. But such physical resilience doesn’t just ‘happen’. As parents, we play an active role in contributing to the general physical health and well-being of our children, and in so doing we actively help develop the resilient qualities we see in the healing of children’s physical injuries and illnesses.


When our children our born, we do our best to take care of all their physical needs. We prepare rooms to receive them into, and make various changes to our homes to accommodate the presence of our new little ones. In our quest to save them from any physical harm, we follow various safety procedures around our homes and in our cars. To ensure the good physical health of our children, we begin making important decisions about nutrition, cleanliness and medical care. We follow immunization schedules to protect them from various childhood illnesses, and we set up regular medical check-ups to follow their physical growth and development. In providing the best physical care that we can, we do our utmost to keep our children well, and in so doing, we endeavour to make them as resilient as possible to illness and disease.


Just as we participate in the process of providing for such physical resilience, we also have the opportunity to lay the groundwork for providing our children with a strong emotional resilience. However, this isn't done with doctor’s appointments and immunization needles! Rather, it is done in the countless day-to-day interactions we have with our children, beginning in the earliest days after they first come into our lives. I’ll talk at more length about this in a moment.

How Else Might We Think of a Resilient Child?


A resilient child is strong on the inside. Not tough, but strong. Strong on the inside means having a core set of beliefs and experiences that one is loved, valued, capable, and can recognize and trust one’s own thoughts and feelings. If a child is strong on the inside, then that child will be much more able to withstand and bounce back from the many ups and downs that life inevitably brings.


Sometimes these ups and downs are quite minor, although they may not feel that way at the time: perhaps an argument with a friend, an unpleasant interaction with a grouchy teacher who is having a bad day, an invitation to a birthday party that doesn’t arrive, a disagreement or argument with a parent or sibling.


Sometimes, though, life brings significantly more traumatic events into the lives of our children: the breaking up of a family through separation and divorce, a serious threat to the physical security of a child and his/her family, or the serious illness or even death of a family member.


The stronger and more resilient we can help our children to be, the more able they will be to cope with these various events, from minor to the most serious. Of course, depending on the severity of the event, the time and parental support required to get through the disappointment or loss will vary considerably. But each successful ‘getting through’ of the small events provides our children with an ever-expanding base of experience and belief in their own ability to adjust and adapt to a wide range of difficulties and disappointments.

How Do We Contribute to Our Children’s Resilience or Emotional Strength?


Internal emotional strength develops primarily from the experiencing of ourselves as lovable, valued, capable and important human beings -- not just at individual points in time, but as part of the continuing experience of ourselves in our relationships with significant others. Of course, as children, the ‘most significant others’ in our lives are our parents, our brothers and sisters, our extended family, and any others who play a part in providing primary care to us over the years as we pass through our childhood and adolescence.


Teachers, neighbours, coaches, and friends’ parents can all play important roles somewhere along the way in supporting the growth and development of a child’s emotional strength.


Sometimes, it occurs in a child’s life where parents have serious difficulties of their own that limit their ability to contribute positively to the development of emotional strength in their children. In these circumstances, growing and developing through childhood and adolescence is a much more difficult experience, and these children can reach adulthood feeling incapable of coping with some of what life brings to them.


However, even if we don’t have the opportunity to develop such emotional strength in our own families while we are growing up, it is never too late! As adults, we have to play a much more direct and active role in learning how to develop this emotional strength within ourselves, and sometimes, getting some help in the process can make it much more manageable and even enjoyable.


If, as parents, we find that we are too often too angry, too sad, too confused, or too uncertain in our interactions with our children, then we might wisely consider speaking to a psychologist or counsellor about these experiences. These professionally trained people can help a great deal with exploring just why it is that we struggle in our efforts to provide the best emotional support possible to our children. A family therapist or counsellor can also be a tremendous source of guidance and assistance in learning how to deal with our children differently, more effectively, with less emotional upheaval and uncertainty.

When and How Do We Start to Contribute to Our Children’s Resilience?


It is never too early or too late to take an active role in our children’s lives to significantly contribute to their development of emotional strength and resilience. There is no single best ‘window of opportunity’. There are countless opportunities at every point in a child’s life for parents to provide important messages about their lovability, their worth and value, their capability and their importance.


Of course, it is important that these messages are conveyed as part of the larger context of parenting. As parents, we must also provide the necessary guidance, instruction and modelling (what we ourselves do) for our children to learn the difference between right and wrong, to understand what constitutes good behaviour and bad behaviour, and to learn how to mix the child’s own individual needs and wishes with those of a larger social group, such as a family, a class, or a network of friends.


No doubt, parenting is a big job. And as I mentioned earlier, it is OK if we take some time to figure it all out. Over the next few pages, I would like to offer some ideas about how we, as parents, can help to make our children emotionally resilient. I am dividing this information into sections, focusing on different ages and stages of children’s development. Feel free to read from the beginning right on through, or if you prefer, flip ahead to the section that addresses the age of your own child, or a child that you know. Please note that the age ranges I provide are approximations, and I am fully aware that each child is unique and develops at his or her own pace. In fact, what we often notice is that even within a single child, there can be substantially different rates of development of various aspects of that child. That is to say, a child’s physical development might move along at a considerably different pace than his or her social, emotional or intellectual development.


Our babies are born, and from that first moment of life outside the womb, the very first step has been taken toward the development of a unique, separate human being, with all of his or her unique attributes, needs, wishes, interests, ideas, capabilities, and experiences. Of course, this is a process that takes many years, and all along the way, we parents have endless opportunities to participate in this quite amazing process. What a gift it is to be a parent!


In truth, we may not feel that it is such a wonderful gift at every single moment! Our new babies have many needs, and in these early months, it is our job to meet these needs as well as we can. Our new babies need to be held, fed, bathed, and changed, at very frequent intervals it seems, and just as often in the middle of the night as in the middle of the day!


In addition to our babies’ needs to be physically cared for, our babies need to be loved and cherished. To love and to cherish is to value, respect, nurture and support unconditionally the healthy growth and development of our children. This is the very cornerstone of the relationship between parents and children, and it’s something that we build on throughout our lives together.


In the first few months, our babies have no ability to discriminate needs from wishes. That is, they simply experience a state of needing some kind of care and comfort, and they literally cry out for it. Some babies are louder than others, some are more persistent than others, but they all try in some way to bring a caring adult into their company to make them feel better.

Parenting our Newborn Children From Birth to 18-24 Months


Some babies sleep a lot, some sleep very little. Some babies need lots and lots of physical contact, others need less. Many babies need feeding very often in the first few months as their stomachs are so tiny that they can only manage very small quantities of food at each feeding time. Some babies need lots of stimulation in the form of people and things to hear, see, and touch, while others need less.


Our task as parents, even in these very early months, is to begin to learn about the unique needs of our baby. Who is this tiny little creature, and what makes him or her special and unique? As we begin the task of parenting our babies, we become students of our children’s development. In our efforts to learn about our children, we convey a fundamental respect for them as little human beings in their own right, with a developing set of their own likes and dislikes that are not necessarily the same as ours. The older our children get, the more aware we will become of the dissimilarities between some of their interests and preferences, and our own (just ask any parent of an adolescent!).


Over the longer term, the better we come to know and understand the individual uniqueness of each of our children, the better are our chances of supporting and encouraging them to be all of what they might be, and to feel happy and satisfied with most of the choices they make throughout their lives. Perhaps this is the greatest gift of all that we as parents can give to our children.


For many of us, it is quite easy to recount at some later point in time certain unique characteristics or behaviours that we noticed in our child almost from the day he or she was born. Different levels of activity in responding to the environment can be seen right from birth: some babies are more content to quietly watch the world go by around them, while others are constantly trying to actively engage with the world from very early on. Also in these early days, we see different levels of reactivity to change: some babies constantly seek out new sights, sound and touch, while others react with varying degrees of distress at even the smallest of changes.


Somewhere in the first 4-6 months, and every baby is different in some way, together, we and our babies discover that we establish some kind of pattern or routine to their sleep, eat, and play schedules. While trying to meet the many needs of our new babies, even from the beginning, we have to find a way to fit their needs in with some of our own. We too must eat, sleep (do brand new parents ever get enough sleep?), work, take care of our homes and other children, and play (or relax!), although in the very earliest months it can seem quite a challenge, if not impossible, to fit everything in.


Usually by around 6 months of age, things settle down somewhat, but our babies continue to be completely dependent on us to provide for all aspects of their physical and emotional care. Our babies grow increasingly interactive with us and the world around them. They still do not have any understanding of the difference between a ‘need’ and a ‘want’ -- everything is still experienced as a ‘need’ – although clearly we can see them learning and responding to different behaviours of ours.


We also come to learn what our babies like and don’t like, and ideally, we are able to play with them and tend to their needs in ways that mostly bring them comfort and enjoyment. Again, we see individual differences very early: some babies like to sleep on their sides, some on their stomachs; some babies like to be carried facing into our shoulders, others prefer to be held more in a rocking position; some like the motions of a baby swing, others prefer more stationary positions; and I could go on and on.


Throughout the first year, we learn vast amounts about who our children are. In recognizing and respecting the uniqueness of each of our children, and responding to this as best we can, we convey to our children that they are important and valued little people. By taking pleasure in each of their accomplishments along the way, we convey to them that they are capable. By doing our best to respond to their physical and emotional states and needs, we provide them with a sense of security and certainty about their lovability and their importance in our lives.


In the latter part of the first year and throughout the second year of their lives, we watch with amazement, the incredibly fast pace of development as our children become more and more mobile, and more and more vocal. Now, we must be ever watchful to ensure that they can explore the world safely. We establish rules and boundaries about where they may safely go, and what they may safely do. We also begin to teach our children the meaning of yes and no. As developing little people, they don’t just automatically know what is OK and what is not OK.


Throughout the years of our parenting, we are both students and teachers of our children’s development. In these early years, our children rely on us completely to provide them with a sense of physical and emotional safety. While we encourage our children to explore and experience their world, and express their own emerging thoughts and feelings about it, we must also provide them with limits that ensure that they are not overwhelmed by physical dangers or excessive emotional intensity.


We have all seen two year olds completely ‘beside themselves’ in a fit of rage or apparent ‘desperation’. It is, at times, not possible for little children to manage the intensity of their feelings. If they are tired, and/or hungry, it becomes an even more impossible task! At these moments, children must depend on their parents or caregivers to provide them with comfort and soothing and emotional control.


Quiet words, a gentle touch, reassurance that the adult will take care of things: all of these will help to settle an upset child. Sometimes simply removing a child from a difficult situation is enough to calm things down. Sometimes it is helpful to give a child a little quiet time to him or herself. Again, as students of our own children’s development, we can learn through experience what works best for which of our children, as each is different from the other.


It is important to understand that little children are not trying to be emotionally out of control. They truly cannot help it. Managing emotional reactions is something that we all learn throughout the course of growing up. We have to allow our little children time and experience to learn about their own feelings and reactions. If we react with emotional intensity (angry, impatient or critical), it is like throwing a lit match into the gasoline! The situation becomes far more difficult to settle down, and children perceive that there is something fundamentally wrong about them that has triggered such an intense reaction in their parent.


As we teach our children about the world of feelings, and how to experience and express them safely, it is also essentially important that we provide validation and confirmation of the feelings that they do have. Learning to recognize and trust our own feelings has its very roots in these early childhood experiences with our parents. If we can come to recognize and trust our own feelings, we can listen to them and use them as guideposts in making important decisions that shape our lives as we grow up.

Parenting our Pre-School Children Ages 2-4 Years


Up until this time, we the parents and caregivers have played the most central role in the lives of our children. Our children have been completely dependent on us for virtually all of their care. Most of their experience of the world and of themselves has centred around their experiences and interactions with us. \\


During these pre-school years, children often become more involved with other children as they join nursery schools, play-groups, and various other pre-school programs. The world of the small child expands dramatically, and we see leaps and bounds being made in social development. Again, social skills, how to get along with others in cooperative and mutually satisfying ways, are skills that are learned. As parents, we also are teachers of social skills, although the job is shared by others as well, if our children spend time with other groups of children.


These are very important years for the continuing development of a sense of oneself as a lovable, important, valued and capable little person. Young children are trying out new activities and skills at a tremendous rate. As any parent will agree, these are the years for an ever expanding array of creative productions: arts and crafts of all sorts and sizes, creations in the sand and in the water, and with any kitchen ingredients that children can get their hands on!


Children are growing increasingly physically competent, and they take great delight in walking, running, jumping, and in any other ways, moving through space, exploring their world and their expanding capabilities. It is usually a time of high energy and unbridled enthusiasm. As parents, we can often only marvel at what seems to be a never-ending source of creative and active energy. If only we could recapture a small portion of that in our later years!


During this period, children have a tremendous need to have their new skills and accomplishments recognized and applauded by the people around them, especially by those people who are most important in their lives. Thus, we hear the endless refrains of ‘watch this’, ‘watch me jump’, ‘look at my picture’, ‘do you like my sand castle?’, ‘do you want a mudpie?’ And I rather expect that you could add at least another 1000 examples from your own experiences with your preschool child!


Yes, this is attention getting behaviour, of the very best kind! During these years, children are more actively experiencing themselves as growing, creating, producing, performing, interacting, physically adventuresome little people. And while they are trying out all of these new things, they are looking to the significant adults in their lives to celebrate their growth and development with them.


It is the positive, affirming responses that we offer back to our children during these years that form the very solid foundation for their belief in themselves as valued, capable, and important people. We take note of the things they do and the accomplishments they experience, and in so doing, convey that they matter to us. We congratulate them on their efforts and on their many newly acquired abilities, and in doing this, convey that they are absolutely capable of trying and learning new things. The more of this positive affirmation that we can provide during these early years of our children’s lives, the better we help to prepare them for what lies ahead. If they feel sure and confident about their abilities to try and learn new things in these early years when most children have an abundance of energy and desire to learn, we help them to believe that it is OK throughout their lives to try new things.


At the same time that we try to provide a fairly steady level of positive affirmation, we must also be attentive to our role as teachers of ‘good and bad’, and ‘right and wrong’. All children need the structure and guidance of their parents’, teachers’, and caregivers’ authority to teach socially and personally appropriate behaviour. Fair limits need to be set, and appropriate consequences need to be assigned when children’s behaviour goes beyond those limits.


It is absolutely reassuring to children to know that limits exist, and that the adults are able to keep things from getting out of control. These are essential lessons in learning to grow up in a world full of people, where respect for the needs and wishes of others must be learned along with the confirmation, recognition and understanding of one’s own needs and wishes.


Small children are generally like little sponges when it comes to learning new things, but it is reasonable to expect that they will need many repetitions of an experience before they get it just right. This applies both to new skills and accomplishments, and also to learning about rules and consequences. Remember, we have lots of time to teach and learn from our children, and it is OK to go slowly. If they don’t learn a particular skill or lesson the first or second time around, trust me, you will get many, many more opportunities to help them try it again.


Little children are not little adults. They can’t and they don’t think like us; they haven’t had years of experience yet, like us; they don’t have adult capacities to figure things out. It is very important that we not place adult expectations on them to know and understand as we do. When expectations are too high, children can only experience repeated feelings of failure and disappointment.

Parenting our School-Aged Children Ages 5-12 Years


During these ‘middle’ years, we continue to watch our children’s interests, activities, and abilities grow and expand. Their social world plays a larger and larger role in their lives, and their immediate needs of us slowly, gradually begin to diminish. Many parents speak of large portions of these years to be the ‘chauffeur’ years. Our children become more and more involved in the outside world, and a big part of our parenting is to get them to where they need to go!


Our children are still trying new things, and continue to need our support, encouragement and positive affirmation of the efforts they make. But the requests for such affirmation don’t usually come as fast and furiously!


As our children’s abilities to understand expand dramatically, they begin to try to make sense out of many of the experiences they have, and of the things they observe around them. Our conversations with our children take on a different tone as we try to answer their questions, and help them struggle to grasp some of the more difficult things in life that they become aware of during these years.


Sometime during this period of development, our children figure out that we are not perfect, that we do not know everything, and that there are some questions for which we cannot provide the perfect answers. It is often a time in our relationships with our children that we begin to be a little more aware of who we are as individuals in these relationships. We are not just moms and dads, but also individual human beings with our own needs, wishes, interests, thoughts, ideas and personalities.


Our children become more aware of our imperfections, and if we have given them permission to speak their minds, they will begin to reflect back to us certain truths about ourselves. This can be quite exciting if we are open to learning more about ourselves as well as our children, or it can be quite unnerving! Or, it can be some of both! If we, as parents, can acknowledge some of our own imperfections and essential humanity to our children, and take responsibility for our own parts in both the things that go well, and also in the conflicts that we will inevitably have from time to time, we can teach our children through direct experience that both persons in any relationship play an ongoing role in how the relationship develops.


Learning to take responsibility for our own behaviour (the great stuff, the good stuff, and the not-so-good stuff) helps to teach our children not to automatically blame others when things do not go well. In these middle years, friendships form, and shift, and reform again. Some children are fortunate enough to have one or two steadfast and reliable friends with whom they learn many of the ups and downs of interpersonal relationships during these middle years of childhood. Where possible, we as parents can help to support and encourage our children’s friendships with others by assisting in setting up ‘play dates’, so that children have opportunities for one-on-one play times in addition to the larger group play experiences that occur in the classroom and out on the playground.


Again, these are important years for learning how to work things out in personal friendships. If we are willing to be available, our children will look to us for guidance, support, understanding and encouragement. Remember, it does take time, and our children are generally ready and willing to learn! We have had more experience than they have so far, and sometimes we do have some useful words of wisdom. Sometimes, our children just need someone to listen patiently, and provide them with a safe place to talk through some important experiences in their lives.


By taking the time to talk and listen, we continue to convey to our children that they are important in our lives. Listening, without judging, to their various thoughts and feelings acknowledges that they too have something of value to contribute to our conversations and in a greater sense, to our lives. Supporting them in their various endeavours, whether academic, musical, sports-related, or creative, is a continued confirmation of our belief in their capabilities.


Encouraging our children to find and pursue interests and desires that are uniquely theirs is another important task of parents during these years. Sometimes, it can be a little tough to separate out what we wish for our children, and what truly reflects our children’s own best choices for themselves. It is OK if this is something of a process by trial and error that takes place over a number of years. Trust me, if your child hasn’t found his or her ‘best thing’ by the time they are 6 years old, all is not lost.


These days, we have access to so many activities for our children that we can feel overwhelmed both by the sheer extent of the choices available, and the idea that our children need to be exposed to everything before they reach the age of 10. During the school year, 2 or 3 extra actives outside of school are certainly enough for the vast majority of children. Some children are quite content with 1 or 2.


If you can determine what is the best fit for your own child, in terms of variety and intensity of extracurricular activities, then these activities will provide enrichment and pleasure for everyone. If you mistakenly choose too many or too few, too challenging or not challenging enough, there will be resistance and perhaps even conflict around your child’s continued participation. Again, if we get it wrong at one point in time, we can simply adjust accordingly for the next ‘sign-up’ period.


Children do not have to proceed through all the levels of all the activities that they try, but when they do find something that brings them a sense of joy, satisfaction, and accomplishment most of the time, then it is wise to encourage them to pursue this to the best of their ability.


It feels good for children to find something that they enjoy and at which they experience some success. These experiences provide opportunities for children to discover and subsequently believe in their ability to try and learn new things. This provides a basis of self-confidence that carries children comfortably into new experiences throughout their growing up. Of course as adults, we know that life brings a never-ending stream of new experiences: some exciting, some frightening, and some unfortunately traumatic.

Parenting our Teenaged Children


Our children enter adolescence, and a new adventure of parenting begins! During these next few years, our children are making their passage from the world of childhood into that of adulthood. It’s a time that can be full of energy, optimism, and the belief in limitless possibilities. It can also be a time of struggle, uncertainty, and considerable conflict. This can be conflict between parents and their adolescent children, or conflict within the adolescent themselves, as they begin to grapple with some of the larger issues in the world.


Over the course of their adolescence, the child’s world expands enormously, and in these days of massive access to information, and the amazing speed of transfer of information, adolescents are becoming greatly aware of the world around them, including much that is fascinating and beautiful, and much that is quite terrible.


These are the years for young people to strive for increasingly greater amounts of independence and responsibility, and individual decision-making. Many adolescents look more to their peer group than their parents for some of their discussions and decision making, as they understandably experience their peers to be more similar to them. These are also important years for adolescents to begin to explore the possibility of more intimate relationships. The emergence of strong sexual feelings presents a whole new world to discover and explore and make some important decisions about, and for parents to lose sleep over!


For parents, one of the toughest parts of adolescence is to watch our children make ‘mistakes’, particularly when we are certain that we could protect them from experiencing the unpleasant consequences of such mistakes. Yet, even as younger children learn from trying, sometimes failing, and trying again, so too, do adolescents. The parent who can resist the temptation to say “I told you so” conveys to their teenaged child a basic trust that he or she is quite capable of learning well from their mistakes. One of the biggest challenges of parenting adolescents is to find that ever-moving best balance between ‘letting go’ and ‘holding on’. Rules and consequences are in a semi permanent state of change, but it is important that parents continue to provide reasonable and fair guidelines that allow all members of a family to live within an atmosphere of trust and respect.


Adolescents continue to need the presence and security that their parents can best provide, but they also need many opportunities to try new things on their own, and then draw their own conclusions about their experiences. Certainly, it can be enormously helpful to begin to learn and interact with the larger world out there with the security of home and caring parents safely in the background.


If children have come to adolescence with a pretty solid foundation of belief in their own capabilities, belief in their fundamental value and importance in the world, and a reasonable ability to identify and trust their own thoughts and feelings, the passage through adolescence is going to be dramatically easier. Not that it will occur without incident, but it is far less likely that these adolescents will find themselves dramatically off the general course in life that they have chosen.


Keep talking with your adolescent children – not at them, but with them. Try to listen to what they have to tell you, and remember that they too are still trying to work out their way in a much more adult world.

What Can We Do to Help Our Children When They are Not Coping Well With Life?


Despite our best efforts to nurture and support our children’s emotional resilience, sometimes it does occur that our children struggle with something in their lives.


  • We might see a change in their sleeping habits: they may have difficulty falling asleep, or wake up more frequently during the night looking for company and comfort, or wake up very early in the morning and be unable to fall back asleep.
  • We might see a change in eating habits: a sudden increase or decrease in appetite, or a dramatic change in food preferences.
  • Sometimes when our children are not coping well with something, we see a change in behaviour: they might become more rebellious, seemingly rude and outspoken, or they might become increasingly withdrawn, quiet and generally less involved with the normal activities of their lives.
  • Sometimes, when things are not going well, our children may appear to be more emotionally fragile. Tempers may flare, or tears may come more readily. Sometimes, our children can simply tell us that something is bothering them: that they are feeling sad, or angry, or confused about something in their lives.


When we become aware that all is not well with our children, the best thing to do is to listen, as carefully as possible, to what they might try to tell us, without judgment or criticism. If we are able to understand the nature and extent of their concerns, we may be able to offer some gentle guidance, reassurance and support.


Has there been some significant event recently that they are trying to make sense of? When major changes happen in children’s lives, children do need time to adjust. They need time to think about what’s happened, talk about it, and take some kind of action to help calm and soothe themselves in the face of the change.


Significant life events include: the serious illness or death of a family member or close family friend; serious marital conflict or other conflict within the family; separation or divorce; moving to a new home in a new neighbourhood or city; and change in the economic stability of the family.


Sometimes the significant event is something that a child has only thought about, imagined, or misperceived or misinterpreted from something that has happened or something that they expect to happen. These ‘internal’ events can be much more difficult for parents to know about, but if we are patient, and give our children the opportunities to voice their thoughts, feelings, and ideas, these events may be brought to light.


Whatever has risen up to bring about any lasting distress in our children, we can best help our children by making the time available to listen carefully, to convey an acceptance of the range of thoughts and feelings they might express, and to participate with them in looking for ways to calm their upset feelings. If signs of our children’s distress continue on over a period of weeks, and we are unable to determine the source of distress and/or the means to alleviate it, there is help available.


A call to your family physician can be the first step in making contact with a professionally trained counsellor, social worker, or psychologist who has experience with children and adolescents of various ages. You might also consider speaking to the principal of your child’s school, as many school boards now do provide some access to professional counselling services.


If your family physician is not able to make an appropriate referral for you, you can check in the local yellow pages for the phone numbers of the national, provincial or state referral services (for psychological services) in your region. Of course, if you have a friend who has had a good experience with a professional counsellor or therapist, you might consider discussing this with them.


We cannot expect ourselves to be able to provide for all of the physical health needs of our children, and sometimes we must seek out the assistance of appropriately trained medical personnel. Similarly, it can happen that we need professional assistance in tending to the psychological and emotional needs of our children. When help is needed, the earlier the better. Often the help that we do get in dealing with our children’s distress provides us with new opportunities to learn about ourselves, our children, and how we might all cope better when life brings us difficult and stressful experiences.

Summary


Resilient children are children who believe in themselves as lovable, capable, valued and important people who can recognize and trust their own thoughts and feelings. They can:


  • forgive themselves when they make mistakes,
  • they won’t give up without making a decent try,
  • they can soothe themselves when they are upset,
  • they can ask for help when they need it,
  • they can take responsibility for their own parts in making relationships with others go well or not so well, and
  • they can mostly make good decisions for themselves, or live with the consequences of less-than-perfect decisions.


The more resilient that we can help our children to be, the more able they will be to get through the ups and downs and changes that life brings along.

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