Here's How You Can Build Emotional Resilience in Your Children

Happy, sad or frustrated, we are experiencing different emotions every day. Similarly, our children are also facing different situations daily that cause them to have both positive and negative emotions. The question is, how we can help them to overcome the negative emotions? The answer lies in building emotional resilience. What is Emotional Resilience? Emotional resilience is an ability to deal with challenging situations calmly and successfully. This is essential for our children nowadays as they are now in the world of fast-changing trend and they need to know where they should stand with their own strengths. Unfortunately, youngsters in Malaysia are struggling emotionally. Two out of five youngsters experience anxiety while one out of five suffers from depression. Looking into the issue, we need to be aware that our children are constantly given the ‘shortcuts’ to succeed, to meet the family expectations and to excel in schools. They are living in the world where they are denied from the opportunity to develop their own skills at their own pace. However, what our children actually need is to develop emotional resilience. If they are emotionally resilient, they will be equipped with the following positive attributes. 5 Characteristics of An Emotionally-Resilient Child Children who are emotionally resilient are usually more confident and optimistic. They are more willing to try out new tasks and take responsible risks. Besides, they will have stronger relationship bond with their family members, peers and people around them. This is because they are willing to develop trust with other. Emotionally-resilient children will be more willing to contribute as they believe their action could bring difference in other’s lives. As what Maya Angelou says, “You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated”, emotionally-resilient children are more capable to cope with failure. Next, they would be more likely to take control of the situation. They would also take full responsibility for their actions. Since emotional resilience can bring our children these positive attributes, why don’t we move forward to help them to build emotional resilience? Here’s How to Build Emotional Resilience among Children Tip #1: Listen to Your Children Daily and React Appropriately Image credit to Unsplash This was my personal experience with my parents. Ever since I was a primary school kid, my mother would always say this to me when I talked about my problems in school. Isn’t your fault for what has happened? After listening to this response for a few times, I gradually stopped sharing my problems with my mother without me noticing it. This is because I realized that I did not feel better after sharing with her. When we have problems in our daily lives, we also long for someone to talk to and listen to our problems without any bias and pre-judgment. This applies exactly the same to our children too. When our children decide to open up to us about their problems in school, we should listen to them wholeheartedly. Never interrupt with meaningless blame and scolding. Instead, you can ask your children neutral questions like how did they feel and provide them comfort such as hugging or patting on their back. With this, your children will feel emotionally secured. They know that they will have you to rely on and talk to whenever they face any problems or challenges in life. This will also help to prevent your children from being bullied in schools too. Tip #2: Build Your Children’s Self Esteem Image credit to Pixabay As an emotionally resilient individual, you would believe in yourself and know which areas you are good at. So, you will persist despite any challenges and obstacles along the journey. If you wish to cultivate this spirit in your children, you ought to build their self-esteem throughout their childhood. Make them feel good about themselves. The easiest way is to get them to experience the joy of giving. Involve your children in community services and charity work. You should involve them in the household chores too. With this, they would feel the sense of accountability and belongings to the family. Besides, you can encourage them to learn new skills and apply these skills into their daily lives. Break what they wish to achieve into smaller tasks so that they can celebrate their small wins along the journey. Tip #3: Celebrate Both Failure and Success Image credit to Pixabay As most of us celebrate our success, we should equally celebrate our failure too. It is through failure, we learn our mistakes and we step closer to our success. Here’s another misconception. As we have made mistakes along the journey, we wish that our children would not repeat the same mistakes. So, we would stop them way before they wanted to venture into something new. This is certainly one of the biggest mistakes in raising our children. What we should do is to encourage them to make as many mistakes as they can and figure out themselves how to resolve the mistakes. I am particularly touched by a story where a successful entrepreneur shared how her father encouraged her to make mistakes. She mentioned that her father would ask her the mistakes or failure she experienced weekly. If she did make any mistakes or failure in trying out new things, her father would give her a high-five as a compliment. This had really helped her to be more resilient and persistent in any new challenges and goals she was committed to. This is because she knew that every mistake and failure is taking her nearer to the success. We should really get our children to get this growth mindset: Mistakes makes me grow and I am willing to embrace any challenges. On the other hand, we should provide genuine compliments and rewards to celebrate our children’s success. Praise them for their continuous effort that takes them to their desired goals. However, you should avoid from these compliments that are not constructive in building their emotional resilience. Tip #4: Avoid Comparison to Build Emotional Resilience Image credit to Unsplash Looking into comparison, you should never ever compare your children among their peers and even among their siblings. This destructive act is not only detrimental to your children’s emotional resilience; it is going to affect your children in the long run. You might wonder, how can you be sure about this? I knew this because my sister is a victim of comparison. Being the youngest among the siblings, she was constantly pressured by my mother. My mother would always compare her academic result with mine and my younger brother’s. To make the situation worse, my mother even compared her to her peers. Consequently, my sister was constantly in fear that she would disappoint my mother and my mother would be ashamed of being her mother. Till now, even she is 23 years old, she is still carrying the emotional stress deep in her heart. Can you see how comparison has belittled an individual? If so, how can we avoid comparison? Firstly, we should acknowledge that every child has his/her own potential and strength. Some children might not excel academically, but they have extraordinary strengths in starting up a business and generating creative ideas. Discover your children’s talents and constantly encourage them to pursue their talents. Give compliments to each of your children and get them to acknowledge their sibling’s strengths too. Tell them that they would excel in different areas that they are good at. Never Neglect on Building Emotional Resilience Challenges and failures are never absent in our lives. So, we should prepare our children early in facing any challenges and failures. By building their emotional resilience, they would be able to control their emotions and mindset about embracing failures as part of their success. Believe me, your children will never be the same if you help them to be emotionally resilient.

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