Common Sense Parenting with Pam

Foundational Skills #6: Resilience

• Pam Palanza • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Can resilience really transform your child's life? Join me on Common Sense Parenting with Pam as we unpack the profound impact of resilience on a child's development. Discover how resilience isn't just about bouncing back from setbacks but is an essential skill for navigating the complexities of life. Through compelling stories, like that of Spanx founder Sara Blakely, we reveal how embracing mistakes can unlock creative problem-solving and personal growth. This episode promises to equip you with practical techniques for fostering resilience at home, helping your child learn from failures, manage disappointments, and face life's challenges with confidence.

Explore the pivotal role resilience plays in your child's mental well-being, academic success, and social interactions. I share insights on how a resilient mindset helps children handle peer pressure, recover from academic setbacks, and manage conflicts in family life. These strategies are designed to promote a positive, stress-free learning environment, emphasizing the importance of patience and consistency in parenting. Connect with me on social media to share your experiences and join this important conversation on empowering children to thrive amidst life's inevitable ups and downs.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Common Sense Parenting with Pam, the podcast where we simplify parenting with common sense tips, real life scenarios and a little bit of humor along the way. I'm Pam and I'm here to help you build the skills and confidence you need to raise happy, resilient and responsible children. So grab your coffee, take a deep breath and let's tackle parenting one common sense tip at a time. Welcome back, and I'm glad you joined me today because we're diving into one of the most vital skills any child can have, and that is resilience. Now this is foundational skill number six in our series and it's a game changer. Now let me just pause here and say, if you have not caught the first five of our episodes, in our foundational skills there's 10 skills. Go back and listen to those. They're important, no particular order, but just go back and check them out. We have four more coming up after this one and then we're going to move on to some other good things. But resilience allows children to bounce back from setbacks, adapt to challenges, face life's obstacles with confidence. We all want that for our children. We all want to be able to do that as adults. So you need to start teaching them when they're young how to do this.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode, I want to cover why resilience is so important, how it's influencing your child's life, and give you some practical scenarios and techniques you can use to teach resilience in your home. But why does it matter who cares right? Here's why Resilience is essential because it helps your children handle disappointment, handle failure, frustration, without feeling totally defeated. It's what allows them to keep things going when things don't go their way and we all know that happens in life and to see challenges not as failures or roadblocks, but as opportunities to grow. Resilience is closely tied to mental well-being. Children who build resilience early on are more likely to have a positive outlook, deal with stress more healthily and develop coping skills that will serve them well into adulthood, and that's the goal here. But how does it affect your child's life? Well, let's say in school, a resilient child, they can navigate social situations, they handle peer pressure and they bounce back from academic setbacks. They're less likely to feel overwhelmed by challenges, which can then make learning and friendships less stressful. In friendships and in family life, resilience means they're much better equipped to deal with conflicts and misunderstandings that arise. They can accept when things don't go perfectly and work to find solutions rather than getting stuck in those negative feelings. Now I'm going to give you some techniques to teach resilience, and you can use whichever one of these you think would work for your family. Obviously, you know your family best, but one of the most effective ways to build resilience is to help children see mistakes as learning opportunities, and we've talked about this before. But it's really important that you normalize failure and mistakes. Let me give you an example Now.

Speaker 1:

Sarah I forget her last name she was the founder of Spanx and she said when she was growing up, every day at dinner her father would say what did you fail at today? What did you fail at Now? Initially? Right, you think, well, that's a weird thing to ask. I mean a parent to ask their child. But think about this. She said he viewed failing as success, because when you fail at something, that's an opportunity for you to learn. That's an opportunity for you to maybe pivot, for you to get creative, to problem solve. And she said that is one of the things that kept her so on track, even when she was facing challenges as she was developing Spanx and getting told no over and over and over again from lots of different retailers. But she said every time I heard a no, to me that was a yes. It was something I needed to do differently, something I needed to change, and I was resilient and I stuck with it. Great example, great example.

Speaker 1:

So share stories of times that you've made mistakes and whether you were a child or even as an adult, and what you learned from them. For example, if you were ever burnt a meal while cooking, let's just make this a simple one. Explain how it taught you to keep your eye on what you were doing and not get distracted. I mean, that's a really simple one. But tell them you know, even as an adult, what mistakes have you made and how did you address them. How did you overcome, how did you keep going, how you were resilient. Anyway, when your child experiences a setback, you can say things like what can we learn from this? Hmm, let's try a different way next time. Things like, what can we learn from this? Hmm, let's try a different way next time. These kind of questions can encourage them to see mistakes as a part of growth rather than something to avoid or something to just quit. Always encourage problem solving and if you missed episode number one, that's all we talked about how to teach your children how to problem solve. When your children or your child encounters a challenge, encourage them to brainstorm solutions rather than just jumping in to fix it. So say, for example, they're frustrated with a puzzle, so instead of solving it for them, ask them questions like what do you think would work here? What if you tried turning this piece a different way? This approach helps children see that they can come up with solutions on their own, which is empowering and builds resilience.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm going to throw in a little personal note here. Here I do a lot of brainstorming for my business. I have for years and the method that I use that works really well for me is I take Post-it notes. Now, this would be good for your older children, who can read and write. But if I have an issue I want to think about or a project I want to develop and you know I've got to brainstorm I take a Post-it note and on each individual Post-it note I write an idea. I take a post-it note and on each individual post-it note I write an idea, I write a solution. One on each one and that's it. I put it aside, go to the next one, keep piling them up, piling them up, piling them up, then what I do when I'm finished.

Speaker 1:

I've dumped everything out of my brain. I caught my brain dump. Then I go back to my post-it notes and I put them in categories, which ones are similar. Once I've done that, then I go through each category and I go, hmm, would this thing work? Does this something I want to do, yes or no? If it's a yes, I put it aside. If it's a no, it goes in the trash. Some people save those no's for later. Me, I trash them. I want them out of my brain, out of my thought.

Speaker 1:

Do it, however, works for you. And then, when you're done, what you have in front of you are ideas, solutions. Right, for me they're ideas for new projects. They help give me guidance, they help give me a path forward. It's a great way to do a brain dump without having to think too hard. Quite honestly, okay, so you can adapt that a little bit for your children. See, quite honestly, okay, so you can adapt that a little bit for your children. See how that works.

Speaker 1:

Okay, teach them emotional regulation. And this is going to be our foundational skill number 10. So I'll go into that in really more depth in probably a couple weeks, but when your child can emotionally regulate themselves and they're resilient, can emotionally regulate themselves and they're resilient, they manage their emotions effectively. Help them identify their feelings by saying things to them like I see you're feeling upset, let's take a breath together. Teaching them techniques like deep breathing or counting to 10 can help them feel in control during tough moments. Now, over time, they're going to start to apply these techniques on their own when they face challenges, which makes it easier for them to bounce back from setbacks.

Speaker 1:

Model resilience here we are. I always say model, model, model. Children learn by watching you. They're watching how you handle stressful situations. If you're stuck in traffic, are you fussing? Are you cussing? Are you doing things you shouldn't be doing? Modeling for your children. Use this time instead to play a fun game, listen to music, talk to your child. Show them that setbacks don't have to ruin your day. Right, you can still have a positive attitude and remain calm.

Speaker 1:

Celebrate those small wins, every small step your child takes towards resilience. Praise them for it. Praise those efforts when they face those challenging situations, even if they don't succeed right away, say look, I'm proud of you. You should be proud of yourself. You did not give up. Look how hard you worked to solve that. Celebrating those small moments reinforces their self-belief, their confidence in themselves, and helps build their self-esteem, which helps develop their resilience over time.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's talk about how you can do this. We told you you need to do techniques, but let's talk about some other ways, some scenarios of how you can teach your children. Let's say you're playing a board game and your child loses. Instead of them throwing a tantrum or quitting, don't let them do that you can say you know what losing doesn't feel good, does it? But that's part of playing games. We get to try again next time. How about when they don't get what they want? Oh boy, if they're upset because they didn't get a toy or they had a privilege they wanted, empathize with their disappointment, but encourage resilience by saying you know what it's okay to feel disappointed. Let's think of something else that can make you happy right now.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm going to share a quick story. I had a follower, actually today, reach out and ask me a question about. They had a little boy, I don't know how old he was. He was at the water park, he misbehaved and the parents took him home and my first question was had he been notified of consequences? Had he been warned that if he did not settle down he would go home? And the answer was yes. Three times, three times, wow, three times. They told him if you don't stop, he was screaming, tantruming, we're going to go home. And he continued anyway and they went home. And so the question to me was did I think that was appropriate? And I said absolutely that was appropriate, because he was warned three times and he still chose to misbehave.

Speaker 1:

So he lost the privilege. We're talking about a privilege here, right? So this little boy's not getting what he wants. He was upset, for whatever reason, at the water park. He acted out, he lost the privilege. Now they took him home and yay for the parents.

Speaker 1:

I'm applauding the parents for that one. Me, I would have gone after the first time. I'm telling you one time and if you continue, we're leaving. But to each his own. But this little boy needs to learn resilience. He didn't get what he wanted. Now he's got to go home. Say you know what? It's okay, you're upset and you're angry, but we're going to take you home right now and you can dry again next time. So it's not something. Resilience is not something they're going to learn overnight. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of common sense parenting with pam. They face challenges. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Learn and, if you did, please leave a review that helps other parents find us, and if you have friends who also have children, encourage problem solving, feel free to share this. I really appreciate it. You know I love to hear from you so you can always find me on my socials. And until then, remember, hug and love your babies. These efforts create a resilient mindset that will help them in every stage of life.