"One way to understand the development of resilience is to visualize a balance scale or seesaw. Protective experiences and coping skills on one side counterbalance significant adversity on the other. Resilience is evident when a child’s health and development tips toward positive outcomes — even when a heavy load of factors is stacked on the negative outcome side."

Our culture has turned therapy into a privilege and as such, many who would benefit struggle or cannot access.  Therapeutic strategies aren't out of reach to anyone, just direct therapy may be.  While social media can be a very, very bad thing, when carefully shaped with likes and preferences, it can be a powerful therapeutic tool - those are the items I ensured my IG account is showing and have grown to love it precisely because I carefully shaped it to my needs and preferences.  Like this example by a mom who is a therapist:

Kids character will be shaped by not what they are told, but by what they see daily.  Values we instill in them aren't instilled with words, but with actions they witness.  They watch their loved ones closely and mirror everything they see, even when we least expect it!

"In a couple of days, we'll likely see lots of Beetlejuices, Inside Out emotions, and Wolverines running around, asking for sweet stuff. For those who enjoy Halloween, being something you're not for the night is the whole point. But for some, every day is Halloween (for fellow '80s goths, cue the Ministry song) when it comes to their online identities." ... click to continue reading the rest of this email content from Common Sense Media

Children engage in the same brand of sportsmanship they watch their loved ones engage in - if it is mean spirited ridiculing kind, they'll mimic it; and if it is the sportsmanship based in kindness and compassion, they'll mirror that. 

Sometimes children in school are confused about what is easy and what is hard when it comes to difficult peer interactions.  They may think that talking tough=mean makes them cool and that is hard, hence makes them admirable; but it is easy to be at whims of emotional reactions that cause hurt with mean words and clicks of mean kids who confuse themselves for cool kids.  The admirable beacuse it is hard thing to do is to resist the temptation of the peer pressure that causes hurtful language and actions even if the cost is not being perceived as cool.  Giving up the shallow harmful "cool" is hard, hence respectable.  Good sportsmanship is about that in sports and in every aspect of life.  

The American Psychological Association states that "Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.

A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, including the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world, the availability and quality of social resources, and specific coping strategies.

Psychological research demonstrates that the resources and skills associated with resilience can be cultivated and practiced.

Adapted from the APA Dictionary of Psychology" - Source

It is widely acknowledged that healthy eating and exercise promote physical resiliency by strengthening the immune system, hence not reacting to every bug someone coughs or sneezes near or at us.  The notion of emotional resiliency is similar in that we can build ourselves and each other up emotionally to resist the emotional equivalents of common bacteria and viruses.  We can choose the salad over the fries just as we can choose the belief that every mean remark can affect me the way water absorbs into a sponge, or I can let it slide off me like water hosed at a mirror.  The more healthy habits - healthy to the body and the mind - we support children building, the more resilient they will be to outcomes of coughs and sneezes AND to verbal remarks that should be withheld, just as those coughs and sneezes should be hidden/covered.  

So, a balanced approach of THINK before speaking (see below) but also not taking personally when THINK didn't happen, prepares kids for the realities of life in its many forms.  

Some resources I recommend on this topic:

https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience

https://albertellis.org/rebt-cbt-therapy/ - Why not take couple key points to use proactively with young people before unhelpful thought patterns become firmly established?  Seeking proactive approaches to corrective cognitive distortions is a powerful way to support emotional resilience.  

"Instead of focusing on “rules” which tend to mean “things we can’t do” try reframing it as “skills” or “what we need to learn to be able to do new things”.

Why do this? Because rules feel constricting- they feel like “no’s” that are being forced on us. But skills are things that allow us to access new privileges and abilities." - click text and read more on the 'socials for parents' tab

Over the last couple decades, not intentionally but nontheless, child rearing and educating has inadvertally moved away from building kids' emotional resiliency.  Collectively, or so my personal and professional observation informs, we must cope with addressing situations that often shouldn't even exist but do due to lack of emotional resiliency.  Presence or absence of these skills and abilities is the result of the context and intential teaching or its absence.  This year, I hope to introduce the topic of building/promoting/teaching emotional resiliency.   - click text and read more on the 'socials for parents' tab

Over the last couple decades, not intentionally but nontheless, child rearing and educating has inadvertally moved away from building kids' emotional resiliency.  Collectively, or so my personal and professional observation informs, we must cope with addressing situations that often shouldn't even exist but do due to lack of emotional resiliency.  Presence or absence of these skills and abilities is the result of the context and intential teaching or its absence.  This year, I hope to introduce the topic of building/promoting/teaching emotional resiliency.  

From an email from Stretegicparenting.com:

"

You’re receiving this email because you were a part of the ADHD Parenting Summit.

We often end up paying more attention to what’s not "working," because those things tend to feel the most urgent.

But in doing that, we sometimes forget to notice what’s actually going right.

That’s why today is a great time to start "unwrapping the gift," as Dr. Hallowell calls it.

As he brilliantly explained in his summit talk, The Gold Standard Guide for Turning Your Bright Kid into a Brilliant Success in School and Life…

It is very important for parents, teachers, and mentors to actively look for signs of talent and potential, even if they’re small or not fully developed yet.

The key is to be INTENTIONAL about finding those sparks of ability.

Start asking yourself:

·       What activities does my child gravitate towards?

·       Is there something that seems to make them light up?

·       When do they show curiosity or excitement?

Dr. Ned Hallowell went through this himself.

In 12th grade, he attended a tough boarding school in the U.S. His English teacher asked him to write a short story. When he handed it in, the teacher wrote in red ink, "Why don’t you turn this into a novel?"

As someone with ADHD and dyslexia, Dr. Hallowell’s first thought was, "No way I can do that!"

But he was also flattered because he was the only kid the teacher challenged that way. So he took up the challenge.

He had no clue how to write a novel, so he asked his teacher, "How do I do this?"

The teacher’s response?

"One page at a time."

By the end of the year, he’d written a novel—and it won the senior English prize.

He’s been writing books ever since.

As a parent, you’re in a unique position to help "draw out" these talents from your kid.

Once you spot those signs of a gift…

Whether it’s an interest in storytelling, a knack for building things, or a love for problem-solving…

It’s time to fan the flame.

That means encouraging your child to dive deeper into that interest.

But be careful…

Kids know when you’re just giving them empty praise.

If you tell your child, "You’re so talented!" but can’t explain why, they might not believe you.

So when you recognize a gift, be specific:

·       "I can tell you’re really good at solving puzzles because you figured that one out faster than I could."

·       "You seem to have a great imagination. I love how creative your stories are."

·       "You notice details that others might miss, and that’s a real strength."

When you back up your praise with examples, it helps your child see that you genuinely believe in their abilities…

And that can make all the difference in helping them believe in themselves.

Try it out…

Take a moment to observe your child.

·       What do you notice?

·       What are they naturally good at or curious about?"

Before the omnipresence of screens in kids' lives, kids were coming to school with language and social skills and fine motor skills that made them ready for school.  In the absence of screens, they had no choice but to chat and resolve inevitable/typical conflicts and play with crafts that developed important prerequisite skills that supported school success.  Over the years, and alarmingly so since the pandemic, children often come to school lacking these foundational skills.  Kindergarten assumes those skills being present and when they aren't and child struggles, often considerations of issues that may or may not actually be present are made.  While access to information and diagnosticians support a growing number of various diagnoses, it is important to observe that some perceived issues aren't issues outside of inadequate exposure and experience with situations and tasks that used to be the foundation of the preschool age.  The question of nature vs nurture is often tricky.  However, as educators we often find ourselves truly observing and asking if student struggles exist not due to an alleged disability, but simply due to lack of experience with tasks that when mastered ensure no consideration of such disability.  When a child comes to school unprepared, schools do their best to assist in catching up with prerequisite skills.  But any such need to play catch up does not get lost on children and tends to correlate negatively with children's self-concept development.  The more mindfully kids time is spent in the years preceding school entry, the more confidently they come in and engage in activities presumed as developmentally typical.  No struggle with tasks easy to those around means confidence.  When children come in struggling with tasks that their peers do with ease, educators observe and support and hope to help children grasp those skills in order to be able to proceed with learning successfully.  But it is important to know that to support children's greatest confidence and success, the more of the foundational skills they arrive with, the more they learn of what is actually within the school curriculum.  And as such, the more empowered and confident and prepared for ongoing success students continue being.