Modeling Resiliency
“You can do hard things!” is an important mantra and affirmation to communicate to our young people, especially during all the ups and downs of adolescence. But how can we actually show our students that this mantra is true?
Stress and challenging situations will appear at different times and in a variety of ways. Instead of trying to shield our students from these experiences, we need to help them develop their own strategies to navigate these challenges and feel empowered having made it through the tough time. Resilience is a trait that helps us cope with challenges, and that is exactly what we need to model for our children.
Emotional Awareness
The acknowledgement of how we are feeling on a day to day basis, or with a specific challenging situation, will aid us in naming our emotions. Once we can label how we are feeling, we then can decide which strategy will best help move us forward.
With this modeling technique, we are showing our students that recognizing their emotions makes it possible for them to manage them, instead of allowing the feelings to take hold of the situation.
2. Ask Questions
Resist the urge to fix your young person’s problem! Easier said than done, right? But by bouncing the problem or challenge back to your child with questions instead of answers, we are helping them think through the situation for themselves and develop solutions together, not for them.
3. Embrace and Celebrate Mistakes
Mistakes and missteps are a way to gain insight into what worked, what didn’t work and the opportunities for growth for any situation. We want our young people to embrace this growth mindset and see that mistakes help us learn.
Understanding how to respond and recover from challenging situations is the key factor in showing, not just telling, our young people that they can in fact “do hard things!”