The adult role is a significant one in providing consistent messages early in a child’s life that they are valued and inherently okay people. It doesn’t mean all the behaviours they exhibit are okay, but we need to learn to separate the behaviour from the child.
Promoting a positive self concept and resilience in children provides the most significant and important foundation for everything else and every other part of learning throughout life that will occur. The community can work together to ensure the messages that children receive most consistently, whether at home, in school, at extra curricula activities, or at sporting clubs, all promote a realistic but positive message to children that they are valued and valuable.

Ways to encourage and promote Resilience

• Don’t offer to draw things for you children when they ask you to or when they say, “I can’t draw this”. Encourage children to have a go themselves, encourage them by saying, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look exactly like it really does.
• If a child says they can’t do something, ask questions such as, “how else might we try?”, “what else could we do?”, “what might work?”
• Sometimes, doing something with rather than for the child is important. “Lets do it together”, or “you start and I will help a bit”, are other ways that you can encourage a child to build a belief in themselves.
• Providing children with opportunities to practise skills, such as going to local parks, climbing, running, and trying things out.
• If a child is feeling upset or friends won’t play with them, try to use reflective listening strategies as discussed in Chapter 9 of What’s the Hurry? to help the child acknowledge how they feel, and then help the child to find some options.

A positive self concept is one of the most important aspects of helping to promote resilience in every child. 

A strong sense of self is an important foundation for future learning and for life. Defining successful learning is not just about academic achievement, but acquiring a positive self esteem and belief in oneself.

Resilience enables children to believe they can attempt to solve problems, to have a go, to take risks and to believe in their own competence.

Promoting resilience helps to avoid children and adults from developing ‘learned helplessness’ where they believe they are not able or capable of doing anything. Viewing the child first, as separate from their behaviour, helps to avoid children being labelled as ‘stupid’. The behaviour can be labelled and addressed, but not the child’s identity.
Adults play a major role in the development of self esteem and resilience. The messages, reactions and responses to children from adults can either promote a positive and realistic sense of who they are or a negative perspective.

Encouraging children’s attempts and the processes and steps they use along the way are just as important, if not more important, than simply the end result. All children have needs and a right to be respected and accepted for who they are. Whilst we may not accept or respect or condone all of the behaviours, all children have a right to be respected.

You may like to attend a presentation by Kathy on resilience. These are listed on the website at www.kathywalkeredcon.com.au
For further details and how to promote and encourage resilience,: ‘What’s the Hurry?: Reclaiming Childhood in an Overscheduled world” by Kathy Walker.