The Art of Raising a Resilient Child

By Anna C Partridge

An essential, must-read for all parents - - - - now more than ever! In the challenging and changing world of parenting, the introduction of technology, increase in mental health issues, reduced exposure to risk, dwindling communities and pressure to always be perfect in a busy, often overwhelming world, raising resilient and con

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher
• Release date: Jun 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648748304

Anna C Partridge

ANNA PARTRIDGE has worked with children and their families for over 15 years as a teacher, counsellor, writer and parenting mentor. She is an expert on the theory of resilience in children and has combined this with positive psychology to help children thrive and flourish in a challenging world. With the introduction of technology, fast paced, busy lifestyles and a noticeable dearth of resilience, families are riding a new wave of raising our next generation. In her new book, The Art of Raising Resilient A Child, released mid 2020, Anna provides strategies to build strong relationships in families and emotionally, physically and mentally resilient children. With an educational background, Anna uses her knowledge of interpersonal relationships and emotional intelligence as well as cognitive behaviour theory to help families understand and develop solid relationships between parents and their children as well as siblings. She helps families understand that life is meant to be up and down and the need to develop resilience to help weather the storm. With the surge of mental health issues developing in children, building these skills are imperative to curbing the incidence rate of anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. Anna is an advocate for children's mental health and wellbeing and a regular parenting writer for Huffington Post and the Wellbeing Magazine. Currently working as a high school teacher, she loves the rich conversations she has with teenagers about thriving socially, emotionally, mentally and physically and also enjoys leading a culture of wellbeing across the schools she has taught in. Anna is married with three children and lives in Canberra, Australia.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

What is resilience?

‘Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.’

– Nelson Mandela

One of the key ingredients to mental wellbeing is developing and maintaining resilience: mental resilience, emotional resilience and physical resilience.

Our children need to be mentally, physically and emotionally resilient to be able to ride this wave of life. They need to have strategies to bounce back. They need to feel a sense of belonging and significance and above all they need to feel connected to their families and communities to feel a sense of wellbeing.

Building resilience is a key factor to buffering anxiety and depression because when our children know they can bounce back, they do. When they have the strategies and support around them, they can weather the storm. Children who are anxious and are diagnosed with depression bounce back when they know they are not alone and have good strategies to deal with their worries. Resilience is a key factor to building a strong mind, brave heart and healthy body.

The scientific definition of resilience is the power or ability to return to the original form or position after being bent, compressed or stretched.

When referring to resilience in us, it is about the ability to be strong, healthy or successful again after something adverse or bad has happened. The definition of resilience used here is the ability to bounce back from life’s setbacks physically, emotionally and mentally.

Resilient people;

Are brilliant at problem solving as a coping mechanism to deal with stress including taking charge of a problem

Have the ability to face their fears and take risks

Have lower levels of denial, avoidant coping behaviour and behaviour disengagement

Have high positive emotional intelligence and optimism and the ability to reframe adverse experiences in a positive light

Are socially competent and know how to ask for help

Have a natural ability to build their own community with connected, strong friendships/relationships

Are flexible in their thinking with attention and focus

Have a sense of purpose and belonging

Have a well-defined moral compass, belief system or faith to find meaning in the midst of trauma

Can find humour in serious situations

Know the boundaries between themselves and trauma and grief

Have self-awareness of their environment and state (including self-confidence and self-esteem)

Have great self-care habits including a creative outlet, exercise, community support or a regular care routine like massages, facials, and pedicures.

Are logical and rational in the face of stress and adversity (not over catastrophes or irrational)

‘At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself – yet also a belief in something larger than oneself. Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They find resilience by moving towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as a temporary state of affairs.’ Hara Estroff Marano, Editor-at-Large for Psychology Today.

So what does a resilient child look like?

A resilient child is someone who is learning and mastering the ability to bounce back from an adverse situation mentally, emotionally and physically.

Building resilience in our children is not like teaching good manners or teaching the skill of skipping or hopping. Resilience is more complex and long term. Children need to learn and develop resilience often and in many situations. We can build resilience through our words, actions and the environment we provide.

Here are some questions to determine how resilient your child is now…

How does you child deal with disappointment?

Does your child solve problems on their own or come to you?

How does your child deal with falling over on the playground?

Does your child have a strong self-image?

Does your child eat well? Exercise enough? Get enough sleep?

Does your child make friends easily?

Can your child tell you when they are sad, angry, and happy and really recognize their emotions?

Does your child love learning and love school?

Your child’s ability to problem solve their own concerns, their independent nature, their physical state, their ability to deal with emotions, their self-confidence and body image and their capacity to learn all go towards determining how resilient our children already are and with any of these lacking, determine the areas we need to work with them to further build their resilience skills further.

Fig. 1 shows the successful outcome model for children who are resilient. I created this model to be used in schools and with families to demonstrate the steps a resilient child will go through when faced with a setback or adversity. It is a continuum from when the adversity or setback hits, right through to reaching a successful outcome.

For a child to reach a successful outcome or be resilient, they will draw on their own schema, past experiences and cues from adults around them to interpret the situation. They will then lean heavily on their capacity to be resilient to react to the situation. Their actions will result in either a positive or negative outcome.

The model works like this.

Adversity hits: The adversity that hits is classified into two categories. It is either a crisis which are generally sudden, unexpected and have a major impact on activities, events or situations such as death, moving, divorce, acts of violence. It can also include smaller unexpected adversity such as disappointment or something that doesn’t go the child’s way. Or it can be chronic, ongoing stress that can include childhood neglect, unmet needs, chronic sibling fighting or bullying at school or a bad school or home environment.

How do I interpret the adversity?: The way a child interprets the adversity is based on their past experiences of such an event, activity or situation. They have built a way to see the world through their own schema and this will influence how they interpret the adversity. It will also be determined by the genetic disposition and their sensed or perceived immediate risk to them. To cue this, they will assess their immediate surrounds and take cues from peers or adults. This is where our role modeling of parents is important.

What is my resilience capacity?: Their capacity for resilience will come into play strongly here. This is how strong their mind is, how brave their heart is or how healthy their body is. These will determine their level of ability to bounce back and how successful the outcome form the adverse situation will be.

If a child has a strong mind or mental resilience – they will call on their good decision making skills, problem-solving skills, and agile mind from the maximum opportunity to learn as children, their brain capacity and the core values and belief system they have already formed.

If a child has a brave heart or emotional resilience – they will have learnt how to handle a situation based on their strong relationships with an adult, with the community and with their siblings. They will be emotionally ready to deal with the stress in a more rational way without over catastrophizing. They will back their decision in with their high levels of self-confidence, non-judgmental character, independent streak and ability to empathize and be compassionate towards others.

If a child has a strong body or physical resilience – they will have the energy and grit to be able to deal with the situation long term. They will have self-care skills to nurture their body in times of stress and adversity and know how to provide it with adequate nutrition. Their genetic make up will be strong and able to withstand the stress without getting ill.

How do I react?: They will react to a situation by enacting their strong mind, healthy body and brave heart and reach a successful and positive outcome. The stage between How do I react? and Successful Outcome will often be the longest stage and will vary on length depending on the severity of the adversity.

Successful outcome from adverse situation: The child has bounced back or is resilient to the adversity or setback. This will look different in every situation.

Let’s run this model through a scenario.

April is 9 years old. Her grandmother died overnight and this morning her mother told her she had died. The first thing she will be doing subconsciously is thinking of what death means to her. These questions might be scanning through her head – who has died that I know? Was it a sad experience? Now they are dead, what happens? Will she be in heaven or somewhere else? Who is going to make our rainbow birthday cakes now she is dead? I wonder if I can see her. Mum is pretty sad so that means I probably need to be sad too – but Dad isn’t crying so maybe it is OK if I don’t cry. The only person April knew that had died was one of Grandma’s friends a few years ago and didn’t really pay too much attention to it. All she knew was that Grandma had been a bit sad and gone to a funeral – whatever that was.

April had a great relationship with her grandmother and also has a strong relationship with her mum. She knows her mum is sad and so she is sad too. She starts crying softly and cuddles her mum. She then goes into her room and gets a photo of her grandma and tells a story about her grandma when she came to her 8th birthday party and danced to the Top 10 hit ‘Shut up and Dance’ when it came on. She waited for her mum’s reaction and wasn’t pleased when she smiled.

She hadn’t had her breakfast yet and so went to the kitchen to make her cereal and asked her mum is she wanted a cup of coffee. She knew she was sad so this might make her feel better. She went and got her school uniform on because it was Wednesday and that is what she did every Wednesday morning before school, brushed her teeth and did her hair. She knew she was sad, but she was still going to school.

She didn’t know whether to ask her mum to many questions about what happens to Grandma now so she waited until she got in the car to go to school and asked dad. Dad wasn’t at work yet so she guessed he would stay home and help mum today and cheer her up a bit.

When she got to school, she told her best friends and her best friends mum and they were all sad because they knew her grandma. She cried again at school, but just a little bit.

As we can see, April interpreted her Grandma’s death through her schema and past experiences of death and got cues on how to react from her mum. She used her empathy and compassion to make her mum smile. She followed the habits that had already been set for a Wednesday morning by eating breakfast and getting ready for school. She was able to remember her strong relationships with her grandma and relished in that. She also knew that her mum was upset so waiting to ask her dad any questions. She then drew on her strong relationships at school with her friends and her friends mum to comfort her and help her make sense of the situation.

As a parent, where can we have the biggest impact in the resilience journey?

Both at the ‘interpreting the adversity’ stage and by nurturing and building on your child’s resilience capacity.

Children will interpret the adversity from past experience and cueing from peers and adults. By providing rich experiences, age appropriate risk taking, independence and coaching when adversity or setbacks happen, we are building up their schema to interpret a situation quickly and without over catastrophizing.

By nurturing and building a child’s resilience capacity, you are ensuring they will be in the best position to ‘find’ the successful outcome and bounce back. By helping our children develop a strong mind (mental resilience), brave heart (emotional resilience) and healthy body (physical resilience), we are building their resilience capacity and allowing them to successfully navigate life’s ups and downs.

CHAPTER 2

The building blocks of resilience

Resilience is not just a result of biological predisposition. Developmental research has shown that parenting choices taken while the child’s brain and nervous system are still developing are crucial when it comes to overcoming trauma later on.

– Steven Southwick, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine

Understanding where our own resilience comes from helps to be able to nurture it in our children.

It is strongly argued that the ability to bounce back is innate. In the debate of nature versus nurture, we are born with resilience – some more than others. It is along the way with the experiences we are subject to and the way we are raised where it is either nurtured or it evaporates.

Think about a toddler. When a toddler is learning to walk, they are unsteady on their feet. They fall down and get up and fall down and get up. This goes on for about two or three months until eventually they start running. Even after a year of walking, they are still not completely stable and they fall over and run and fall over and run again.

Earlier on when a child was learning to crawl or even roll over, the same thing happened. They tried and tried and tried until they eventually succeeded. Children are inbuilt with resilience. They know at this point it is important to bounce back. They know if they keep on trying, they will eventually walk. I have an image in my mind of my little boy getting so frustrated with learning to crawl that he would rock on his knees and start crying out of sheer frustration of not being able to move. The next day he would get up and try again. And when he did actually crawl, at 8 months old he had the biggest, cutest grin on his face you could imagine. He had succeeded.

Even at this very young age, I encouraged my son. I told him he could do it. When he fell over and cried out of frustration, I cuddled him. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled with him. So did my 2-year-old daughter and so did my husband. My father in law even joined in. It must have looked pretty funny seeing us through the window – the four of us crawling around the house with my son trying to follow. And then when my boy could stand, he was over the moon about it and started to fall down, get up, fall down, get up all over again.

It is right from this very early age we can nurture resilience in our children.

The scenario of being able to crawl for my son could have been very different. If he cried out of sheer frustration to crawl and I picked him up every time, he would not have been encouraged him to crawl. If I had been ambivalent about him crawling in the first place and not encouraging, maybe he would have known it wasn’t important to start moving. These little gestures help our kid’s pick up on our excitement, encouragement and sense of nurture from a very early age.

Some children are born with more resilience than others.

A study lead by the Durham Child Health and Development Study Center looked at how well babies regulated themselves when separated from their mothers at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months. They recorded the babies’ heart rate when the mother left the room and studied the genes that regulate dopamine in the brain.

The study looked at the two types of the dopamine gene (DRD2) and its effect on resilience. The risky version of the gene is associated with impulse control disorders, aggression, ADHD, substance abuse problems and an overall lower ability to handle a situation.

The researchers found the babies who had the risky version of the dopamine gene showed less regulation when their mother left the room and their heart rate increased. This was true at 3, 6 and 12 months.

This study affirms that certain children who have lower resilience are at a higher risk of developing anxiety and stress to life’s setbacks or adversities than others. It also tells us that our parenting style is key to nurturing a child’s resilience.

Resilience through the ages

It is no surprise that as the years go by in childhood, exposure to stress increases and resilience is tested. Resilience or our ability to bounce back is also tested.

2-3 years old. By the age of two to three years, children are already interacting with the world and its noticeable ups and downs. They need to learn to problem solve, develop empathy, love and build healthy relationships with those around them at this age. They really start to communicate their needs and wants and we can encourage and nurture at this stage.

Children’s basic needs are food, water and shelter to survive, but to thrive they need love, trust, hope and autonomy to overcome adverse situations. They need to learn how to foster relationships with caregivers. They need to learn self-confidence, emotional intelligence and have a good start to life to be resilient.

At this age, resilience is often marred by the developmental stage of being egocentric and a heavy reliance on the underdeveloped rational part of the brain. It seems their natural bent for resilience has ebbed and so, when they are learning to navigate emotions, they can play out in forms of tantrums, hitting, biting, not sharing and other physical acts. It is at this age that we help them understand and recognize emotions and start building emotional intelligence. Modeling, demonstrating and explicitly teaching what emotions look like is important at this age.

A recent study shows that boys develop their empathy by sitting on their mother’s knee as a one or two year old. They learn how to understand and relate to others and build relationships by this mere act of love at this very tender age. By learning empathy, boys are able to navigate the testosterone filled teenage years and be good dads themselves. This lack of empathy building at this age is contributing to one of the reasons our boys aged 17 to 19 are among some of the most violent people in the country.

Being loved and nurtured allows children to set up healthy relationships. We are providing tools early on to help them recognize unstable relationships or tools to be able to rebuild these same relationships.

A huge change in society for this age group over the past two to three decades has been their increased attendance at daycare or preschool at 2 or 3 years old. As the primary care giver, usually the mother goes back to work and children of this age are no longer at home being explicitly taught but learning ‘on the job’ with other children. Choosing a childcare centre or preschool for your child that nurtures emotional and social learning is important.

Another trait with children between the ages of two and three is that they are little sponges. They want to explore the world – touch, taste, hear and smell everything, taking everything in and making sense of the world around them.

A parent I worked with had very strict rules around letting her kids into the kitchen; scared they might burn themselves on the oven or get scalded by the hot water. Or worse still she might drop a knife or hot pot onto them. They had to stop at the door or the line she marked and couldn’t go past it. However, if that were the rule in our house, I would have barely seen my kids in the early days. I felt like I was constantly in the kitchen preparing the next meal. Many of our happiest times happened in the kitchen. I remember my daughter learning to roll at four months old right into the fridge. The kids would sit and eat cheerios from the cupboard. They would play in the Tupperware draw more than with their own toys and yes, they did jam their fingers in the draw when exploring, but they recovered. My daughter would sit on the bench when I was making dinner or a cake and she learnt how to measure, about textures, different sounds and colours of food. She cracked an egg at 18 months old into the cake mix and yes, the shell did go in. As she got older, she would drag the kid’s table into the kitchen and play with play dough with the utensils from the kitchen cupboard for hours. My son had a dedicated lego bench to sit on in the kitchen so his little sister couldn’t get to his lego and so he could talk to me while I was in the kitchen. The kitchen was the start of our place to explore the world together.

Naturally, when kids start to explore, they will put themselves at risk. Sometimes small, sometimes bigger but it is this exploring and supported risk taking that helps children build resilience. They explore their surrounds and learn how to interact with it and others.

One of the biggest challenges parents face here, is how much risk do we let our children take. There is a fine line between too much risk resulting in danger and just enough risk to allow for resilience building.

Look back to when you were a child.

Were you given some independence and freedom? Were you allowed to problem solve situations? Did you have a good relationship with your parents/siblings? Was the situation around you calm and rational or irrational and a little crazy? What challenges and stresses were you faced with and how were you supported and nurtured to deal with them?

Research strongly shows it is our childhood and upbringing that has a direct impact on how resilient we are as adults. This is why, as a parent, we have a great responsibility to build resilience in our children right from the start.

School aged children. Due to safety concerns, pedophilia and child abduction, it is rare to see 9 year olds walking to the corner store or riding their bike to the park by themselves. My Mum, now in her 70s, tells of the time when she was 9 years old and one of Australia’s largest cities, Sydney. She would catch a bus from her house to the train station at 7am, then a train to school for 10 stops, get off and walk a couple of blocks to school – all by herself. She was deemed old enough and society was gentle enough to let this happen.

In my own childhood we grew up on a farm in the country and were possibly given too much freedom. We would often leave the house early to go on bush walks; horse rides or on the motorbikes at ages eight, six and four for hours at a time. We experienced the ups and downs of life in those few hours and didn’t have our parents to tell us not to jump the riverbank on our motorbikes or not to climb the tree that was in the back paddock. We were trusted to be OK and we were.

I remember we had a chicken shed. When I was three years old, we had 30 chooks and this one morning it was time to clip their wings to stop them flying out. I had done it before and they flap around and fly over your head and I didn’t particularly want to help clip their wings with my mum and two brothers that day. So I waited outside the 6-foot high metal gate with the egg bucket. The chook shed didn’t face the gate so I couldn’t see my mum and brothers, but they were only about 4 metres from me. While I was waiting, a 6-foot brown snake came out of the boards right next to me and slithered into my egg bucket. Instinct must have kicked in and I knew what