Resilience is defined as "the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness."
Some of the most successful people in life have this characteristic in abundance. How do we create it in our children? Listed below are some tips.
1. Be resilient as person - your children will copy you
Your actions will speak more loudly than your words. Be resilient as a parent - when you are down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go forward in life. Your children will copy you.
2. Take responsibility for your actions
If your children have no ownership over anything — actions, property, their sister’s feelings — then they have no incentive try hard, no respect or to try again when the moment calls for it.
3. Help Others
In a world where the young are getting more entitled, an element of serving others will not go amiss. They will learn empathy, resourcefulness and an understanding that life is not always fair. They will learn that others are not as fortunate as them.
4. Show some gratitude
Somebody has worked hard to give them a roof over their head, food on the table, as well unconditional love. They need to learn that gratitude will go a long way in their lives.
5. Let them learn to solve their problems
If they never gain the experiences of solving problems, then they will have nothing to call upon when they need it. Life is not fair. It never was. Life is not always easy. Google does not have the solution to everything.
6. Consequence in their lives
They need to have consequence in their lives. They have to get out of bed in the morning. If there are no consequences, they will literally not get out of bed. These consequences can be positive as well as negative. There have to be consequences for their actions - positive as well as negative.
7. Failure is a good thing.
Everybody should fail at some point, in order to learn how to deal with adversity and how to confront fear. The most important thing after failing is to reflect back on it. It is through this reflection that they learn how to correct the error and go onto achieve and be successful. Do not reward failure, but instead allow contemplation and correction to mentally take place.
8. Allow risk taking.
Failure, consequences, independence, responsibility — every single one of the aforementioned tips involves your children taking some kind of risk. If you try too hard to mitigate those risks, you mitigate your whole children.
“To be something we never were, we have to do something we’ve never done,”
9. Choice
Everybody has "CHOICE" in their lives. They must learn to use it and use it wisely and not blame others.
10. Parent but don't mentor.
Love your children everyday and be their parents. Do not try to be their mentor. They will resent that and not listen. Find another person to be their mentor. Parenting and mentoring don't go together.