There are numerous books available on parenting. Most attempt to answer the query, “How can I set my child up for success?” There’s no easy, simple, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. But there are a few indicators of future success.
The Huffington Post ran an article that quoted University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth. She stated that, when it comes to child development, “It’s resilience, not I.Q. that’s the best predictor of success.”
As a stepparent, the above statement should be music to your ears. When it comes to instilling values and abilities in your stepchildren, it’s possible to make them more resilient.
It’s highly beneficial to help them develop grit or the character trait that drives someone to persevere and work hard despite adversity.
In this article, we’ll cover why it’s essential that your children are resilient and ways that you can help them develop the ability to bounce back quicker from setbacks.
Why Resilience is Important in Children
As we navigate our way through life, we will inevitably encounter problems and setbacks. Some obstacles are largely unavoidable. Setbacks are often part of the process of trying to achieve something or attempting to improve one’s life. It’s often the difficult things in life that are the most rewarding and most worthwhile.
As an adult, you probably understand this. But children are often insulated for a lot of their lives. They don’t have the stress of paying bills, holding a job, or being a parent. But they still need to develop the skill of resilience for when they become adolescents and eventually adults.
Resilience is a block in the foundation of personal growth for everyone, especially children. Children may face difficulties like moving to a new classroom, switching to online classes, bullying, injuries, etc. Being able to press on and still succeed even when things aren’t going well is a valued skill that can propel them to personal growth.
The parenting website raisingchildren.net says it best, “When children overcome setbacks and problems, it builds their confidence and helps them feel more capable the next time a problem comes up.”
A resilient child will also be more willing to try new things because if they aren’t good at a new skill or activity right away, they’ll keep working at it and get incrementally better. The child with grit will also be able to manage negative emotions like anger, sadness, and frustration better because they will remember from experience that those feelings are only temporary.
Now that you know how important it is to raise resilient children let’s look at ways you can help your child or stepchild develop more grit.
Develop a Relationship with Stepchildren
If you try to help your stepchild be more resilient (a process that can be uncomfortable), you should first develop a solid relationship with them. In a traditional family, developing a bond with kids is straightforward, but it’s not as turnkey if you’re a stepparent. So, try to connect with your stepchild, but be patient with them and be sure to give them space.
Be mindful of the fact that you are not the child’s parent, and be respectful of the other biological parent’s role. But don’t be afraid to join your stepchild in their hobbies or joke or laugh with them. You can still be a family even if you’re not the child’s biological parent. And it’s through this relationship that you can help teach them resilience.
Demonstrate Resilience Yourself
Being a strong role model is a crucial component of raising resilient children. As a parent or stepparent, you should always strive to set an excellent example for your children or stepchildren.
After all, children watch, learn, and imitate behaviors that they see other in other people. The process of children watching others and modeling their behavior after what they’ve seen is often called “observational learning.”
If you strive to be a considerable presence in your stepchild’s life, it’s your responsibility to ensure that it’s a positive presence. No one is perfect, but if you can show resiliency yourself by keeping cool under fire or by continuing to try when things aren’t going well, that could go a long way toward helping your child or stepchild develop resilience themselves.
Refrain from Using Catastrophic or All or Nothing Language
What we say matters, especially when it’s a parent or stepparent speaking to a child. The mode matters just as much as the message, so try to limit catastrophic language.
Instead of telling your child, “If you don’t do your homework, you’ll fail out of school, you won’t get a good job, and you’ll be poor your whole life,” say, “It’s important that you finish your homework and turn it in on time so you can develop good time management habits for your future.”
It would help to be careful with all-or-nothing language, as this can ingrain harmful thought patterns. Instead of telling your child, “You never pick up your toys,” try saying, “This is not the first time I’ve asked you to pick up your toys. Please pick them up, as I don’t want to have to keep repeating myself.”
The first statement (“You never pick up your toys”) is likely not true and can make a sensitive child feel worse than necessary. As a rule, try to avoid using always and never when trying to modify behavior, as those words can lead to harmful all or nothing thinking.
Don’t Try to Mitigate Every Single Risk
Children cannot learn to be resilient if they never fail or experience hardship or adversity. You may think that you’re “protecting” them, but you must consider the long run. Your child might be five years old, ten years old, or fifteen years old, but they won’t be that old forever.
If you continuously try to insulate them from risk or failure, you’re only kicking the can down the road and making it harder for them to overcome difficulties in the future.
This process may be painful for you as a parent or stepparent as you will let your child struggle when you could presumably remedy the problem, but again, you need to think of the future. You won’t always be there to help them with their problems, so the earlier they learn to be independent, the better.
The best way to do this is to allow children to have age-appropriate freedoms and help them process their accompanying emotions or debrief them afterward if things go wrong. As time goes on, your child should grow and learn from their bad experiences, and they can figure out how to avoid them or handle them better in the future.
They’ll also realize that although something unfortunate happened, it wasn’t the end of the world.
Help Them with Problem-Solving
Instead of intervening when your child is having trouble with something, work with them after the event has concluded. Discuss how they could have solved the problem or what they should try next time. This way, you can satisfy your parental need to help while increasing your child’s resilience.
Children don’t have the same life experience as you do, so you could share with them ways that you’ve solved similar problems in the past. It’s more beneficial to help this way than to shield your stepchildren from impediments or fix the problem for them.
Though there are parenting books, there’s no diagnostic manual telling you how to handle every potential situation. But if you have a strong relationship with your children, allow them some freedom, choose your words carefully, and aid them in developing problem-solving techniques, you’ll be well on raising resilient children.
Find out here how you can make your child more confident.
