Raising Resilient Children: Instilling Grit for Real Life
The expectations we hold for children communicate the values that are most important. These expectations serve as a framework, modeling to children how to successfully operate in life. When we elevate our expectations, we also promote a growth mindset that sets children up for success. A strong relationship with our children allows us the opportunity to challenge them outside of their comfort zone and appropriately raise the bar to set them up for success (check out the March blog for Transforming Everyday Interactions with Your Child).
“Your children will become what you are, so be what you want them to be.” -David Bly
Identify Values What values are most important in your family? How are you living these values every day as a model for your child? The only person we can control is ourselves. Elevating our expectations for our child means first raising the bar for ourselves. Consider which values are most important to your family (such as kindness, perseverance, honesty, gratitude, etc). Not all families emphasize the same values - and that’s okay! Values are most impactful when they are explicitly stated and revisited often. Take the time to share about your day while sitting down together as a family for dinner and name the values spoken about so children begin to make connections.
“All families make choices about screen time. In our family, we value the importance of play. Right now TV is not a choice.”
“You were feeling nervous to tell me about when your teacher spoke with you today about making safe choices. I appreciate you being honest with me so we could brainstorm different choices for next time.”
“I heard you say the great part of your day today was when Harper helped you build the tower. It was kind to work together, and I bet it was a great part of her day too!”
Promote a Growth Mindset The habits created during the formative early childhood years can shape how children navigate throughout life. During this critical period of time between ages two to seven, children operate most prominently in their limbic system in the brain, an area responsible for our emotional regulation and the behaviors and motivations that form our dispositions. Dispositions like resilience, curiosity, and attention span set children up for success; other dispositions, such as impatience and entitlement, can pose more challenges. A growth mindset is the belief that our abilities can be developed through effort and persistence, rather than viewing intelligence as a fixed trait. This type of mindset is necessary for children to develop grit, as well as a disposition towards lifelong learning.
Children develop a growth mindset when they have the time and space necessary to embrace challenges and persevere through setbacks in a safe and supportive environment. Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and founder of Good Inside, refers to this as The Learning Space. The Learning Space describes the in-between of not-knowing to knowing. Resilience is developed from the length of time tolerated in The Learning Space, usually resulting in a feeling of frustration.
Embrace Frustration Dr. Becky describes frustration tolerance as what enables us to get through the hard things, setting the stage for growth, success, and achievement. It’s a gentle reminder that our role as parents is to prepare our kids for the rest of their lives, not to make them happy in the moment. Allow your child to feel bored, say no, let them struggle without jumping in with a solution. Frustration is also the antidote to entitlement. The root of entitlement is a fear of frustration due to a learned pattern of the instant gratification resulting from someone else immediately resolving obstacles. Remember that as parents, we are striving for a practice makes progress mindset for ourselves, as well as our children. If you often overdo for your child what they are capable of doing for themselves, begin to challenge yourself to step back so they can rise to the occasion.
“The key to preventing entitlement is teaching kids how to tolerate frustration - and that starts with parents learning to tolerate their own frustration first… we should be optimizing for our kids’ long-term resilience - which means focusing on building skills in hard moments, not avoiding them.” -Dr. Becky
The values and expectations we hold for children provide the framework for how to successfully operate in the world. It starts with parents modeling the behaviors and values that are most important and continues to develop with a growth mindset that tolerates the inevitable frustrations that arise. Real life holds challenges that require determination and hard work while offering very delayed gratification for efforts. Children need frequent and repeated opportunities to develop these skills while the stakes are low within the safety of an environment that allows them to fail and try again.
More from Dr. Becky Kennedy: