Five Ways to Boost Your Child's Resilience

For Children’s Mental Health Week - Pt 1

It’s Children’s Mental Health Week, though every week is that for me.

Being mentally healthy is the same as being mentally strong. It’s about dealing with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” - otherwise known as the ups and downs of being alive.

To celebrate and support this week, I’m doing a webinar for Authors Aloud. Do book! But quick - it’s on Wednesday and I don’t know how many spaces are left!

Taming the Anxiety Guard Dog ~ ONLINE EVENT

Here’s the direct booking link: https://authorsalouduk.co.uk/taming-the-anxiety-guard-dog/

Anyway, back to today…

Resilience - a strong boat to withstand storms

Life is like an ocean and we are each a small boat trying to cross safely. We don’t always know what bad weather lies ahead. But when it comes we have to stay afloat. After a storm, we might have to make repairs so we are equipped for the next bit of bad weather. But resilience is more than dealing with bad weather: when the weather is calm and sunny, we need to enjoy that, not spend all our time anxiously waiting for the next storm.

My book, Be Resilient, is the best one for young people to help them build their strong boat and learn to sail it safely, strongly and happily.

But what can YOU do to help build your child’s boat - or, better, to help them learn to build their own - to grow their resilience? Here are five things. They are the five building blocks I offer in Be Resilient.

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1. Help build their support network

Some children struggle with friendships more than others. Some are luckier than others in the people around them. Some need help to recognise who is on their side. Everyone can take steps to build good connections with the people who are or could be there for them, whether family, peers, teachers. Help your child see the positive relationships they have and how they can enjoy and improve them.

Example actions:

• Get your child to identify different people in their lives and what kind of things they could (or couldn’t) say to that person. Who might they go to for help with a particular question? Who could they tell good news to, or a worry, or a joke? Who can they trust for different things? Who is similar to them in any way? Who is different but still a valuable part of their life?

• Could your child write a thank you note or a message of appreciation to someone who has helped them or who they appreciate?

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2. Help them improve whatever skills are important to them

We get better at things by spending time on them, practising, trying, asking for help if necessary. And when we are skilled at something, we feel better, stronger, more confident. So, a skill is both useful in itself but also becomes part of who we are, part of our strength.

Skills can be intellectual/cognitive (such as the ability to read, recite the US states alphabetically or know some historical facts) or physical (anything that uses parts of your body in particular ways) or personal (character traits) or creative (such as using art or music or words) or social (such as team-building, leading, empathy or communicating). There are often overlaps between those categories.

Sometimes it looks as though people who are “good at” something are lucky because they were born with that skill. But no one is born with those skills! They have all been built over time and many hours of practice. Yes, some people have advantages - body shapes or brains that work in certain ways or parents and environments and opportunities that helped them learn and practise everything they needed, but they didn’t just get their skills handed to them on a plate. We grow skills by wanting and trying.

Example actions:

• Discuss with your child what they are already good at (and emphasise how they are good at those things because they spend time on them) and which of those things they’d like to spend more time on. Help them find that time. Are there clubs or classes they might enjoy?

• Also, discuss something they feel not so good at and take a small step towards practising. Remind them that we only get better by practising.

• Find out about and talk about “character strengths” - see viacharacter.org. This is a great way for anyone to understand that skills are about personal strengths as much as academic ability or sporting prowess, for example. Often, children (and adults!) wrongly believe the only skills worth anything are the ones that get us through exams and are valued in school.

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3. Help your child learn positive coping strategies and avoid negative ones

A coping strategy is something we do to protect ourselves from something painful or difficult. A strategy might be positive (if it has a benefit and no subsequent negative effect) or negative (if it makes us feel good at first but has a longer term negative result.) A positive strategy might be doing a breathing exercise or going for a walk. A negative one might be smoking/alcohol or avoiding the thing we’re afraid of. (Avoidance is one of the most common negative coping strategies. When we avoid something we never become less afraid of it.)

So, when your child faces something difficult - such as doing a presentation to the class or going into school - the strategies they use become really important. Be Resilient has lots but even better for dealing with anxiety is No Worries. Help your child choose examples of two types of strategy:

a) intervention - something you do when you are feeling anxious, such as a breathing exercise

b) prevention - something you do as a matter of course to reduce the chance of feeling anxious, such as physical exercise, reading for pleasure, a hobby, taking time out for a bath.

Help them practise these when they are feeling fine, so that they can easily think of them when they are feeling anxious. These are healthy actions that everyone should do often, whether or not they are suffering anxiety.

Example actions:

• For the breathing intervention, internet search “belly-breathing”. Or choose any breathing activity from No Worries (which you can borrow from a library if you prefer not to buy).

• For a mental intervention (ie not physical such as breathing), teach the one I call “just now”. This involves taking the statement about how you feel (such as “I feel scared/angry/embarrassed/ignored/hopeless” and add the words “just now”, to remind ourselves that our feelings are always “just now”. They change.

• Inject joy into the day (or perhaps looking ahead to the weekend) by planning something that is FUN. Fun is relaxing, releasing, rejuvenating.

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4. Help your child be brave

Bravery is when we feel scared but we still do the thing. It requires three things: a strong motivation to do the thing (which usually requires understanding what the benefit will be), knowing how to do the thing and the ability to manage the unpleasant feelings of nerves or anxiety. So you will help greatly if you can break those steps down and let your child see them as separate steps or skills, each of which can be practised. And once you have broken those down, you can see what bits might need to be practised.

Example actions:

• One ideal starting point is to help them focus on how they will feel when they’ve done it: how great they will feel, especially how great they will feel if they have done it to their best ability.

• Remember to praise them for even trying, whatever the outcome!

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5. Help your child make the best choices for them

We can only make the right choice for us if we understand a bit about ourselves - our likes and dislikes, strengths and perhaps weaknesses, how we might or might not be happy. This isn’t something you sort in an afternoon or with one activity. It is a work in progress, this learning about ourselves. Your child does not have to try everything! Of course, we don’t want to put people in pigeon-holes but if you aren’t sporty, you don’t have to be sporty; if you aren’t in the slightest bit interested in music, you do not have to try to learn an instrument. But if you might enjoy sport - or a different sport from those you’ve tried, or a physical activity that isn’t “sport” but just physical activity - then it’s something to try. But to try in a way that fits with you.

So, help your child know themselves but also push themselves, so at least try things that might be fun or inspiring or useful or fulfilling. Help them try things with an open mind, allowing them to understand that it’s OK if they turn out not to like it.

This is why public libraries are SO good: you get to take out as many books as you like (not all at once!) and try them ALL without any cost at all and no penalty if you turn out not to like any particular one.

Example actions:

• Suggest that each family member - including the adults - picks an activity (of any sort) that they’ve never tried. Everyone in the family then helps work out how the individual might try that activity. Everyone reports back on what they discovered - did they or didn’t they like it more than they thought? Why?

• Then do a swap!

In short

By trying each of those five ideas - each of the five building blocks in Be Resilient, overall you build skills, confidence and bravery (because all three are linked), you give the person a foundation of human connection to support them when they need it (as we all do), and you allow them to develop in their own way, knowing themselves but pushing themselves.

That’s mental strength; that’s resilience. And it will protect against those slings and arrows, the knocks and scrapes of life.

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Next time, later this week, I offer you my simple three-step plan for resilience after a setback or “failure”. It’s a very neat system and suitable for people of all ages. I’ve had really positive feedback from schools who love how young people can use it by themselves, either for themselves or to help their friends.

Together, we can build young people’s mental health and, in doing so, our own.

Don’t forget to book your place on my webinar, Taming Your Anxiety Guard Dog - from anxiety to resilience - THIS WEDNESDAY EVENING!