Raise a Happy Child Part 3

Michael Groses' Third element in raising a happy tot is to develop your child's resilience and coping skills.

“Resilience is important for kids to help them cope with life’s hardships, frustrations and difficulties [HFDs],” says Grose. “Developmental HFDs are those that children routinely experience, including loss, rejection, change, disappointment, failure, conflict and fear. Dealing with these helps to build coping skills for the future. “One way to build coping skills is to not overprotect your child,” he says. “Life happens and things don’t always go our way. It’s important that kids learn this and learn how to keep their confidence up. Parents can support their kids by focusing on how they’re feeling and letting them know it’s okay to feel this way. Then they should help them learn to manage it, deal with it and move on.”

How to promote resilience in children:

• Remind your kids that they don’t always get what they want.
• Be attentive to their particular situation and needs.
• Work hard to keep their confidence up and help them get on with life.
• Give kids plenty of opportunities to solve their own problems. Children will only develop their inner resources when given the opportunity to develop their resourcefulness.
• Expect your child to be helpful at home from a young age without being paid. That’s how they learn to be useful.
• Make sure your expectations for success are positive, realistic and based on each child’s interests and aptitudes rather than on adult wishes.
• Normalize the HFD situations so they understand that others also experience similar situations.
• Be a good role model by being a resilient adult rather than an adult who’s continually stressed and has no real life outside immediate family and work.
• Starting a hobby is a good place to begin if you feel that life is all work (and kids) and no fun.

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