In today’s world, building resilience in children is essential. Resilience helps kids adapt to challenges, manage stress, and bounce back from setbacks. By fostering this skill, parents can support their children in becoming confident, capable individuals ready for life’s ups and downs. Our partners at Children’s Hospital Colorado share expert tips for cultivating resilience, understanding its importance and preparing kids for the road ahead.
Resilience isn’t just a buzzword for the post-pandemic world. It’s a research-backed skillset for dealing with the struggles that present themselves in life, no matter how big or small. And it isn’t just for adults either. According to child psychologist Lauren Henry, PhD, resilience is a learned set of skills and strategies that we can help kids cultivate.
What is resilience?
Resilience may seem like a big concept to pin down, but Dr. Henry defines it as a “multisystemic and dynamic process of our ability to cope with risk, threat and crises.” She says there are a few core features that make for a resilient kid at any age: active coping, self-efficacy and social support.
Active coping skills for kids
Active coping is learning to manage distress rather than avoiding it. Consider the estrés some kids experience at school, where social dynamics, tests and more can put pressure on a child. “Passive coping or avoidance is staying at home and avoiding the stressor,” Dr. Henry explains. “I often refer to this as survival response or survival parenting. And in the short-term it's effective, but in the long-term, we know that that actually hasn't built up our child's ability to tolerate distress.”
For parents and caregivers with children who are stuck in an avoidance cycle, Dr. Henry says the response should be twofold. First, it’s important to recognize that the emotions a child is experiencing are very real to them, even if they seem out of proportion to us.
“We want to teach them that they can handle it, and they can find a way through it,” she says. “And so, you might say, ‘This is uncomfortable. You're feeling really anxious. How are we going to get you to walk into the building today?’”
At first, this might mean baby steps. Staying at school for a whole day may be too much depending on a child’s emotional state. Instead, Dr. Henry recommends building up tolerance to the stressor. Maybe it’s just getting up early and getting ready for school or setting a goal to get through first period. “We might have to take smaller steps to work up to the long-term expectation, but in some way, we have to work with our child and support them to face distress little by little,” she says.
In a clinical setting, Dr. Henry and her peers simulate stressful situations to help kids practice resilience. For example, if she has a patient who struggles with anger or irritability, Dr. Henry might cheat in a game of Uno with them or knock over a tower they’ve built. Or for older kids who are experiencing social ansiedad, she might stimulate their active coping by having them approach a stranger and ask them to play a game of charades in public. In a controlled setting with built-in support, this can help kids learn the skills to work through stressful experiences and flex that resilience muscle.
Self-efficacy and self-belief
The tiny steps a kid takes as part of their active coping practice are critical for building another component of resilience: self-efficacy. “Self-efficacy is this belief in myself. I have evidence that I have done hard things before, which means I can do hard things in the future,” Dr. Henry explains. “We know that a child’s self-efficacy mediates change.” With each baby step a kid takes towards facing a stressor, they build a bank of lived-experience evidence, allowing them to push themselves further and further toward active coping.
“Once you feel success, that builds confidence and belief in yourself, even if it's something small. And for a lot of our kids who are stuck in maladaptive coping patterns, it might take a small expectation or small success to develop momentum,” Dr. Henry says, adding that if a parent is setting an expectation for a child stuck in a significant avoidance cycle, the first step should feel easily achievable for the child.
This practice can build “behavioral momentum,” where a child accomplishes something, feels good about it and is willing to accomplish something harder in the future. This helps them move toward active coping and a growth mindset.
Aside from setting manageable expectations, parents, guardians and other adults can help kids build self-efficacy by simply being their cheerleader, Dr. Henry says. She uses the 5:1 rule, emphasizing the goal to have positive comments and interactions outweigh negative ones by a factor of five to one.
“I always try to empower parents to know how much we can increase a child’s belief in themselves. A common misconception of self-efficacy is that it's only intrinsic, but our children build up their confidence and their self-efficacy by the feedback the world gives them,” she says.
The world is full of negative messages for kids, and even neutral messages can seem negative to kids who are struggling, so it’s even more important that caregivers are a source of positivity. Dr. Henry says that a simple smile, thumbs up or pat on the back can be just as powerful for kids as a compliment or verbal validation.
Another principle called “catch them being good,” can help with this as well. Dr. Henry adds: “We are reinforcing that our child can do this, that they did nice work or are taking a helpful path. It’s really trying to catch them even in the smallest wins, smallest successes. It is building up our child's belief in themselves.”
Social support and belonging
Sometimes all the skills and practice simply aren’t enough to make kids feel resilient in the face of incredible challenges. In those times, and in others, Dr. Henry says a social support system can be an incredible source of emotional resilience for kids. Supportive individuals and communities help kids feel a sense of belonging and can encourage them to overcome difficulties.
Dr. Henry describes how decades of research suggests that children are more likely to be engaged when they have a strong support system. “It's also such a protective factor against negative peer interactions like acoso escolar,” she explains.
Of course, building a supportive social circle can be challenging for kids and adults alike. Dr. Henry says it can be valuable to get creative with helping kids build community. That might mean encouraging them to tap into even their most niche hobbies, explore virtual communities and rely on trusted adults, such as coaches and teachers.
Why is resilience important?
In a world where kids can learn how to work on their mental health on TikTok, practices to increase resiliency might get a little lost or forgotten. And because it requires leaning into discomfort, parents and caregivers may find themselves unsure of how to support kids in building resilience.
Still, Dr. Henry says it’s a practice that can have a significant impact on the adults our children will one day become.
“A lot of our kids come to our programs with the biggest toolbox of coping skills you've ever seen. They can deep breathe; they can walk away; they can count to 10. They can do mindfulness or problem solve. They can do it all, but come the moments of distress, they can't seem to access that,” she says, highlighting how patterns of avoiding tough situations or emotions have limited our children’s ability to face distress.
Instead, Dr. Henry stresses the importance of practice and experience using active coping skills by supporting kids through a difficult emotional experience, not avoiding it. She says, “We as caregivers are not going to be able to protect our children from all the distress in this world. What we can do and what we have to do is prepare them for how to respond to crisis.”
