EDUCATION


Resilience in Children


We all want our children to be happy and confident, as well as to achieve and find their place in the world. We must be wary however, of trying to protect them from every upset and sadness. We really should try not to wrap them in cotton wool. Instead, we should prepare them for real life, with all its disappointments and set- backs, and equip them with the tools to deal with it. Our children need to be able to ‘bounce back’ from setbacks such as a failed test, being dropped from the netball team, and friendship issues. We need to encourage resilience. News reports increasingly highlight is- sues of child and teenage mental health.


We read of self-harming, anorexia, anxiety and depression, of a growing number of teenagers being prescribed anti-depres- sants, of academic pressure starting as early as four or five-years-old. Tese are difficult times for our so called privileged children, and we need to give them the tools to cope. Resilience is the ability to recover from whatever life throws at you. We have two choices: to succumb to the pressure, or to survive, grow stronger and move on. As parents, we are programmed to pro-


tect our children from stress and unhappi- ness. I know that if my children are happy, then I am happy. I also know that they need gentle knocks along the way. If they


can learn to give up a playground swing, to lose a board game, or to have a goal scored against them, they will gradually develop resilience for when the bigger events hap- pen: job losses, marriage failures, bereave- ment and grief. I witnessed recently the devastation of a


middle-aged friend for whom life has run smoothly, but whose child failed his uni- versity exams in the same week as her age- ing parent died. Te world ended for her that week, so unprepared was she for the double blow. As a result, she found it im- possible to be strong for either her disap- pointed teenager or her grieving parent. It became her problem when she could have


“Resilience is the ability to recover from whatever life throws at you.” 20 FOCUS The Magazine July/August 2017 www.focus-info.org


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