Building Resilient Children
Building Resilience
I hear the word resilience a lot these days. Resilience is the capacity to recover from difficulties and parents and teachers worry that children do not seem to have the levels of resilience that children of previous generations did. Adults often have various theories as to why this might be. Are we simply becoming too ‘soft’ on children and they need to harden up, or do we have a rosy tinted glow of how things used to be?
I should say from the outset adults should not expect any child to show resilience in the face of experiences that they should NOT have to cope with. In these instances, the environment and the behaviour of the adults around the child should be explored and changed if needed.
That being established, I wonder whether children are genuinely lacking resilience, or are we asking them to cope with things that are simply too much?
So what do I mean by too much? Are we simply asking children to cope with more than they are developmentally able to?. For example school tests are administered to ever younger children. At this stage of development, children are still highly focussed on pleasing the adults around them because they are dependent upon them for survival, regulation and nurture. In addition, their immature sense of self identity is being constructed from the messages that they receive from the adults that care for them.
They are keenly aware if they are ‘failing’ or ‘disappointing’, ‘not reaching expectations’ or not as good at a particular skill as the other children around them. Thus for a young child, failure at a test is so much more than just the test. Naturally, they are going to be very anxious about undertaking any test or activity that they may fail and thus displease the adults. They become afraid to try, or fall apart if it does not go well.
Similarly, we expect young children to ‘sit still and concentrate’ for longer and longer periods, and then punish them when they can’t sit still because their physiology is compelling them to move.
But crucially, at the same time as asking too much of children, I believe we are simultaneously asking too little of them. How can this be the case?
Opportunities for real life learning and adventure have been diminished considerably over recent years, and that was before Covid! Over four generations, children’s roaming has decreased with numerous studies showing that distance travelled on foot has been reduced, the type and variety of outdoor spaces visited has reduced, the kinds of activities undertaken has reduced and the number of companions has also reduced. There are lots of good reasons why it is no longer appropriate or safe for children to have the same level of freedom as our Grandparents had, but the fact remains that it is in these moments of unsupervised, unstructured and unplanned time that children develop cognitive and physical skills, alongside feelings of mastery, self-esteem and self-confidence. As kids learn to take risks and experience genuine highs and lows, they develop true resilience. It is in these unstructured playful times that they literally and figuratively learn to ‘get back on the bike’.
Thus we find ourselves in a vicious and toxic circle. Expecting a lot from kids, while at the same time denying them the very opportunities that would help them to develop the skills to meet our high expectations. Children simply can’t win – they withdraw, shows signs of anxiety or depression, and then we try and locate the problem in the child – they are anxious, they lack resilience, they are addicted to screens, they need to work harder etc.
So what on earth can we do?
If you are a parent reading this, the key to building children’s resilience is to allow time for the kind of real - life experiences that can only happen in an unstructured and unplanned space. Do not feel that that you have to plan every minute of your child’s time with activities, but instead provide opportunities and environments conducive to free play, child lead exploration and for taking risks. If you are a teacher, take a look at the curriculum from a developmental perspective and see how much could be learnt through creative and play based exploration rather than formal teaching. If you are compelled to administer tests (and I know many of you have to), keep them light touch.
And under no circumstances, take away free play time from children.
If you are interested in finding out more about how the erosion of play is negatively impacting children I highly recommend:
A Very Unusual Journey Into Play by
https://amzn.to/3SdRwVb
(If you are interested in finding out more about the studies on children’s ‘roaming’, the following paper is a good start.
Keep Playing!
Jacqui xx