Raising Resilient Children
"We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future"
-Franklin Roosevelt, 1940
First, Assess Your Own Resilience:
How Resilient Are You?
Reflect on your results. Consider what implications this has for you. What sticks out to you?
Use this QR Code or click the link to take a quiz from Mind Tools (n.d.).
Vocabulary to Discover on This Website
ACEs
Growth mindset
Grit
Optimism
Positive thinking
Attitude
Pessimism
Distortion
Internal block
External block
Academic Resilience Approach
Resilience Framework
ABC Model
CBT Therapy
SEL
Coping skills
Protective Factors
Risk Factors
Resilient Mindset
ADAPT Model
Visualization
Connections
Relationships
Model
Scaffold
Positive Self-View
Self-Reflection
Self-assessment
Questionnaire
Adversity
Struggle
Barriers
Pressure
Persevere
Family Resilience Framework
(Link to the Brooks Gibbs Movement)
Assessing Resilience Levels
How Resilient Are You?
Link to self-assessment here How Resilient Are You?, (Mind Tools, n.d.)
Dig deeper and reflect on results
Attitudes impact resilience
Thoughts
Emotions
Behaviors
Link to worksheet here ABC Diary Template, (Mind Tools, n.d.)
All driven by our attitude, outlook, and perception on life
Resilient Problem Solving Skills
Internal blocks
External blocks
ADAPT Model
Link to worksheet here Resilient Problem Solving Skills (Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com, 2019).
Ask What Worked in the Past, and What Flopped?
Link to worksheet here When Was I (Not) Resilient?, (Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com, 2019))
Explore Your Purpose
Link to worksheet here Uncover Your Purpose, (Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com, 2019)
Develop Realistic Optimism
Link to worksheet here Creating Realistic Optimism for Resilience, (Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com, 2019)
What is Resilience?
6 Central Constructs of Resilience
The main spokes are character traits making up the wheel of resilience for children.
We can learn and teach these resiliency skills!
(1) academic efficacy
(2) behavioral self-control
(3) academic self-determination
(4) effective student-teacher relationships
(5) effective peer relationships
(6) effective home-school relationships
(Dwyer, 2013)
4 Core Elements of Resilience:
The aspects primarily responsible in shaping a person’s ability to develop and exhibit resilience.
Confidence
Social Support
Adaptability
Purposefulness
(Cooper, Flint-Taylor & Pearn, 2013)
How Do We Teach & Learn Resilience?
The ABC Model
The ABC Model establishes the underpinning steps for the prominent counseling approach, CBT.
Think and reflect on process in this order:
Adversity: the activating event
Beliefs: how we think about the event
Consequences: directly catalyzed by our beliefs
(in addition…)
Disputation: disagreeing with initial belief
Energization / Effects: how much better we feel after changing the way we think about what happened
(Jain, 2016)
3 Dimensions of Explanatory Style
These habits of self-talk of patterns of thinking drive our entire experience of life and the world. The explanatory style breaks down into three dimensions:
Permanence
Pervasiveness
Personalization
THE GOOD NEWS?!
There is a way out! Tips, tricks, skill building, and practicing strategies all incorporating turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts serve to conquer our brain into adapting to a new, positive, healthy explanatory style. (Jain, 2016)
Strategies for Coping with Stress
ABC Model
Positive Thinking
Positive self-talk
Positively reinforcing
Link to picture of example journal entries (Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com, 2019)
Visualization
Positive images
Control the controllable
Link to graph with activity to chart what we can control here (Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com, 2019)
What You Think? What Is Your Style?
Use this QR Code or click the link to take a quiz from Mind Tools (n.d.)
Wonder whether you are a positive or negative thinker?
Authors Yeager and Dweck (2012) depict with profound clarity in their article, Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed, how the perpetual self-reflection process builds our abilities and endurance as parents in raising strong, resilient children through all of life's storms of adversity to the joy and resilience on the other side.
“Because challenges are ubiquitous, resilience is essential for success in school and in life. In this article we review research demonstrating the impact of students' mindsets on their resilience in the face of academic and social challenges. We show that students who believe (or are taught) that intellectual abilities are qualities that can be developed (as opposed to qualities that are fixed) tend to show higher achievement across challenging school transitions and greater course completion rates in challenging math courses. New research also shows that believing (or being taught) that social attributes can be developed can lower adolescents' aggression and stress in response to peer victimization or exclusion, and result in enhanced school performance. We conclude by discussing why psychological interventions that change students' mindsets are effective and what educators can do to foster these mindsets and create resilience in educational settings”
(Yeager & Dweck, 2012, article abstract).
Again, Reflect on Your Own Mindset. Who's in Control?
Use this QR Code or click the link to take a quiz from Mind Tools (n.d.)
Locus of Control: Are You in Charge of Your Destiny?
References
American Psychological Association. (2012, January 1). Building Your Resilience. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
Cooper, C., Flint-Taylor, J. & Pearn, M. (2013). Building Resilience for Success: A Resource for Managers and Organizations. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dwyer, K. (2013, October 1). Building resilience in classrooms and schools [Review of Building
resilience in classrooms and schools]. Children’s Mental Health Network.
https://www.cmhnetwork.org/news/building-resilience-in-classrooms-and-schools/
Jain, R. (2016, January 10). Teaching students the ABCs of resilience [Blog post]. Retrieved
from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/teaching-the-abcs-of-resilience-renee-jain
Mind Tools Content Team. (n.d.). The ABC technique: Overcoming pessimistic thinking.
Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/abc.htm
Mind Tools. (n.d.). How resilient are you? Find out how to bounce back from problems. Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/resilience-quiz.htm
Price-Mitchell, M (2015, May 20). Does Your Classroom Cultivate Student Resilience? Edutopia; George Lucas Educational Foundation.
Resilience & Coping Archives - PositivePsychology.com. (2019). PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/category/resilience/
Yeager, D. S. & Dweck, C. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that
personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 302–314. DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2012.722805