Helping Children Build Resilience
As already covered in my previous blog, the three most important strategies for bouncing back in the face of frustration are self-distraction, information seeking, and comfort seeking. Children self-distract when they actively turn away from the source of frustration and focus on something else. Those who do this are less likely to be aggressive in the face of frustration.
The ability to self-distract requires the capacity to switch attention away from something frustrating. This can be very difficult to do as the source of frustration can be very compelling. Remember the last time you had a heated disagreement that remained unresolved. How easy was it to turn your focus to something else immediately afterwards? Or did you replay the argument endlessly in your mind, becoming more and more heated as you did so? Imagine how difficult it is, then, for a pre-schooler, who still has their emotional regulation training wheels on, to refocus on something else when they’re still emotionally engaged in the frustrating experience, whether it be a ‘debate’ about the relative merits of wearing a jumper when it’s cold outside, or having to stop playing an engrossing game in order to do something boring like eating dinner.
So how does the ability to shift attention from an emotionally compelling situation develop? The experience of the natural ups and downs of feelings develop an awareness that even difficult feelings don’t last forever. Factors influencing this experience include the intensity of an experience for a particular child, how negative it feels, and the degree of support a child receives, to help them manage their strong or overwhelming feelings.
Some children, from babyhood, seem to react more intensely to unpleasant experiences. Both pre-birth environment and genetic make-up may influence the degree to which babies are reactive to their environment. They may also be more difficult to soothe, meaning they remain distressed for longer than other infants. It is not difficult to imagine, then, that these babies may not learn as quickly or easily that emotional states come and go and that they may feel trapped in their negative feelings. The experience of their attention naturally shifting, or being shifted by their caregiver or parent, is far less frequent and often less successful. Therefore, these babies will need more support to soothe their emotions as toddlers and learn self-soothing.
The second strategy that can help children develop a capacity to bounce back is information seeking. Looking for clues to why they can’t achieve what they want. The child who is working at completing a jigsaw that is just a little too hard, may experiment with different ways of connecting the pieces by taking note of either the shape of the pieces or the colours. This skill allows a child to work through a frustrating experience and gain in confidence, not just at the particular task but also in their ability to persevere without melting down.
Encourage children’s curiosity about how things work, to investigate their world both on their own and alongside you. A child looking intently at an insect is learning how to seek out new knowledge, is essentially learning how to learn, and developing a skill that will help them overcome obstacles in the future.
Seeking emotional support from an adult is the third strategy that can help a young child move on from their frustration, and give them a sense of confidence, both in the support of trusted adults and in their own ability to calm and refocus.
Encouraging a child to seek out a hug and encouragement when their frustration is rising can, rather paradoxically, help them continue to try on their own for longer. Just knowing there’s someone in the background quietly cheering them on is often enough to keep children working at something that they would otherwise abandon quickly. In the same vein, sometimes just a simple hand on the shoulder can also convey quiet encouragement and belief in their capacity to achieve what seems so difficult. Whatever approach you use, the central message needs to be “I believe in you”.
To decide how to best support a child with building their frustration tolerance consider whether they need more emotional support or need more encouragement to explore on their own. Do they need you closer or a little further away? Are they independent to the point that they frequently end up in situations they can’t manage such as running onto the road or disconnected from what is happening around them then suddenly swamped by the demands of other children wanting to play with what they’re using? Or do they cling to you, not willing to even play in the next room on their own? The first child needs you to draw them back in and spend time connecting with them. The second child needs gentle support to move their toe over the line of their safety zone. Both need emotional connection.
But as outlined in my previous blog, the capacity to bounce back in the face of frustrating or difficult circumstances does not just rely on strategies. These are just the means to support the development of underlying emotional capacities in your child, the hammer, nails and screwdriver, while the underlying capacities are like the knowledge, experience and skill of the builder. There are three characteristics, or capacities, that are helpful to develop in all children: reflectiveness, agency, and relatedness.
Reflectiveness is the ability to look within ourselves and notice the links between how we are thinking and feeling and what we do. Understanding internal motivations allows children to interpret their own and other people’s behaviour more accurately. “Mum didn’t comment on my great drawing because she’s really busy right now” is likely to lead to different behaviour from “Mum’s not interested in what I do.”
Another person’s actions become predictable as a child becomes able to understand what the other person is doing and why. A pre-schooler rushing around and tripping over the foot of an adult sitting on the couch rounds on the adult and accuses them of tripping them up. A child without reflective capacity is more likely to believe the adult tripped them purposely, not taking into account their own role or the adult’s intention.
Being able to reflect on our own thoughts and feelings allows us to make more considered decisions. This is a budding ability in preschool, and even many school aged, children. Often they will require adult support to consider how they think and feel, particularly when emotions are high. A child who comes home from school in a really bad mood after a day of being stuck in the middle of an argument between two friends can be helped by an understanding parent.
Effective communication also requires the capacity to reflect. Unless we keep in mind the other person’s point of view (thoughts, feelings and motivations) we end up talking at people rather than with them. This is the difference between noticing when someone else isn’t particularly interested in what we are talking about and changing our focus or letting them lead the conversation, or continuing blithely on. Children who can recognise another person may have a different view from their own are more likely to take turns at choosing what games they play, to allow the other child to talk about what interests them, and to understand when another child’s grumpiness isn’t a personal attack.
To allow this understanding of the link between mind and action to develop adults need to demonstrate a comfort with their own thoughts and feelings as well as those of the child. We, as adults, need to be able to experience our feelings and our innermost thoughts (even the socially unacceptable ones) without either shutting them down or flooding our environment with them. This is much easier said than done, especially when looking after children on a day to day basis. The self-control that comes easily at work dissipates in the face of continuous demands, physical and emotional, from young children. This is, at least in part, because we, as the adults, have to carry most of the self-control load when taking care of babies and preschoolers (and often older children for that matter). Nevertheless, it is important that children can learn from adults how to experience strong feelings comfortably.
Children also need direct help to learn to notice their own emotions and to understand and label these as they feel them. This helps them to understand the links between their behaviour and these feelings, and to think about the possible feelings and intentions of others. Talking about your own responses can help too. For example, telling a child that you feeling sad because the dog is unwell.
Agency, the second important capacity for the development of resilience, means knowing that what we do matters and that we can make decisions and act effectively on our own behalf. A sense of agency develops when children experience success from their efforts. Whether these efforts are communicating what they want or need, or whether they are about learning to do something for themselves for the first time, achievement and adult acknowledgement of it is important. Children need to be recognised for their efforts and delight taken in their achievements. The child who is cheered on as they take their first tottering steps will be motivated to persevere and to bounce back from any setbacks.
Three and four year olds also need adult enthusiasm for their efforts and achievements. A three year old who harnesses all their self-control to wait for the longed for ice-cream needs acknowledgement of their efforts and success at waiting. A four year old who shares with their two year old sister needs to be noticed for this effort and accomplishment. Through adult recognition of their efforts children learn to encourage themselves and to persevere for longer than they would without this absorbed self-encouragement.
Relatedness, the third important capacity, is the ability to value engagement and interaction with others and to form supportive connections. Aunties, uncles and grandparents can all positively influence a child’s capacity to approach and work through any difficulties that come their way. If extended family aren’t available then family friends may fill this need. It’s as simple as regular, enjoyable contact which builds the child’s trust and awareness of avenues of possible support.
Children who can access and make use of emotional support from the adults around them tend to manage life’s challenges more effectively. Together with being able to refocus temporarily on other activities and being able to cope with their own and other people’s feelings, these are the strengths that allow children to adapt to challenges with flexibility. In practice, this is often less like the graceful bending of a young sapling in the wind and more like the whiplash of branches springing back into place. The young child who melts down when they don’t get what they want is not necessarily lacking resilience, or just bending gently in the wind! They are struggling to adapt to the terrible realisation that their wish is not your command. The important concept here is ‘struggling to adapt’.
This is a dynamic process and therefore an opportunity to learn. Parental (or other adult) input at this time which focuses on allowing the child to feel what they feel without caving in to the child’s demands, helping the child focus on something else, and giving them a cuddle to help them calm down as their anger turns to sadness, provides all the building blocks for resilience.