Emotional Resilience

Emotional Resilience is essential in our daily lives, especially to help us deal with confrontations, making choices, getting bad results, encountering negative situations that are beyond our control or struggling with difficult day-to-day activities.

As adults we generally face such difficulties with varying levels of resilience. Equipping children with the skills to develop emotional resilience is an important facet of their growth.

Negative Habits of Mind greatly fuel emotional discomfort. These negative habits of mind include self-downing, the need to be perfect, the need for approval, the ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘I can’t be bothered’ mindsets and being intolerant of others. This week, I would like to continue to share some strategies from the You Can Do It Program, which may help eliminate or help to balance these negative mindsets.

To Eliminate ‘Needing To Be Perfect’

Explain to your child that he/she shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes. Explain that mistakes are a natural part of learning and while it is good to try your best, it is not helpful to insist that everything is done perfectly. Explain that even the greatest scientists and inventors bumble and stumble their way to success. For older children, you can also explain that demanding perfection of oneself can lead to being so worried that it actually lessens one’s ability to perform well. Encourage your child to develop the positive type of thinking called ‘Risk Taking’. In ‘Risk Taking’, a person prefers to do his/her best but accepts that mistakes are inevitable and frequently important as one is learning something new.

Other suggestions for eliminating your child’s need to be perfect include:

• Help your child become more aware of his/her perfectionism and its negative effects on his/her anxiety.
• Have your child make a list of the things he/she always wanted to do but was afraid of not doing perfectly. Encourage your child to try one of these activities.
• Encourage your child to identify areas of weakness. Have him/her try activities in these areas. When he/she has attempted such an activity, point out that he/she now has evidence that he/she can tolerate doing things imperfectly.
• Encourage your child to stop ruminating about grades and instead, get involved in activities unrelated to school.
• Teach your child that there is a continuum of achievement and that achievement is not an all (perfection) or nothing (complete failure) outcome. Encourage him/her to set goals at a place on the achievement continuum where he/she does not have to be the best in order to learn something and have fun.
• Acknowledge and praise your child for attempting things and not doing them perfectly.

Mr David Druery, Head of Staff and Students P-5