The best blossoms always come after the harshest winters. Tress set the best example of resilience. We have observed many tress to survive and adapt to the harsh weather conditions. It’s all because of their strength of the deep roots that give courage to regrow. In simple terms resilience can be defined as the strength to bounce back after setbacks, hard feelings and the mistakes we make. Just like the strong deep roots of trees, children also need to be resilient from their early lives to bounce back from the challenges of life. This post is a “Do-It-Now” version of my previous detailed post of Building Child Resilience Framework. In this post ,there are 15 resilience building activities kids can begin practicing from today. These are some simple activities that need no prep, neither any special equipment needed to do these activities.
How These Activities Will Fit Into The Resilience Framework
Before exploring the resilience building activities kids can practice, let’s do a brief recap of previous post of building resilience framework for kids. So that it will give you a better idea how these activities fit into the resilience framework.
The key components of resilience framework are :-
- Optimism
- Growth Mindset
- Coping skills and Problem Solving
- Emotional Intelligence
Below are the few activities just to give a clear understanding how each activities belongs to the components of the framework that helps children to build resilience.
| Activity | Component | How It Helps |
|---|---|---|
| Calm-Down Breathing Buddies | Emotional Intelligence | Teaches children to handle their emotions and navigate setbacks effectively. |
| “I Yet” instead of “I Can’t” | Growth Mindset | Helps children to bounce back and find new ways to achieve their goals. |
| Gratitude Jar | Optimism | Teaches children to be thankful and hopeful for the future. |
| “Sticky Situations” Role Play | Problem Solving | Helps Children to solve conflict with ease and clear image without being aggressive. |
Quick Guide To Resilience Building Activities Kids Can Start Doing Today
This is a short prep to start practicing resilience building activities for kids. Actually there is no preparation needed for these activities, just need to prepare our mind that we have to make our child resilient in life. These activities don’t require any fancy items. The things that we need are time from our regular lives, calm and patience and few common household items.
This post will share 15 resilience building activities kids can do, but it is not essential to start all the activities at one time. You can choose any 1-2 activities according to your child’s age and nature. There is no need to spend long time for any activities, 5 to 10 minutes is enough but consistency is must. Try to incorporate the activities in your child’s daily routine.
In process of building resilience in children, not only resilience activities for kids are essential but parent’s effort is also a vital part of this process. Parents should be in calm state of mind and set an example of resilience before their children.
15 Resilience Building Activities Kids Can Start Doing Now
1) Calm-Down Breathing Buddies
It is a popular mindful breathing technique for kids where a stuffed toy or animal is used. In this activity, child lies flat on their back and the breathing buddy (stuffed toy) is placed on belly. When children breathe in and out slowly their belly also rises up and down. The movement of their belly moves the stuffed toy also and this appears to fun for them.
This mindful breathing with breathing buddies help children to calm down their nervous system and soothes their anxious feeling when they are overwhelmed.
2) Feelings Check-In With Emoji Chart
Feelings check-in emoji chart helps children to name their different emotions throughout the day. Create or print emoji chart with all the emojis of happy, sad, nervous, scared, angry, tired. When a children point out the emoji on the chart according to how they are feeling, they learn to name different emotions. It teaches children it is normal to feel all the emotions.
Once they recognise their emotions they tend to regulate their emotions and also encourage children to seek support whenever they feel.
3) Shifting from I can’t to I can’t yet
Practicing the power of “yet” with kids encourage them to try the things again that they are not able to do currently. Like if a child can’t tie his shoes and when they say, “I can’t tie my shoes”, change the phrase to “I can’t tie my shoes yet”. So this behaviour promotes growth mindset in children. And hence they understand the path of learning is not blocked and there is always scope to learn new skills.
4) Try-Again Challenge Jar
This resilience building activity helps kids to understand that mistakes are normal and trying again is part of the process. In this activity take any kind of jar and label it “Try-Again Challenge”. Whenever your child have any obstacles like not getting any sums, loosing a match, conflict with friends, give them a gentle instruction to write down the situation in colourful sticky note and put it inside the jar.
And once in week, tell your child to take out one note. Then discuss the situation written on the note with your child and ask them what lessons did they learn from that. And let them express their opinion on how they will handle these situations again if occurs. This way they will learn to face the challenges rather than ignoring. Each time they share their thoughts, acknowledge their effort to look back on the setbacks and pour your positive insights too.
5) Obstacle Course Adventure
Obstacle course adventure helps children to be resilient by learning to rise above the boundaries and overcome the hardships. Obstacle course adventure include mostly outdoor activities where children face situations where they fall and have to try again. While facing these physical challenges, children explore how to push their boundaries by managing their emotions and frustrations. This activity makes them prepared to overcome future setbacks of life. Stanford fit has shared an article on Obstacle Course adventure explaining to adjust the difficulty level according to child’s age and how this helps children to learn balance and endurance in life.
6) Role-Play Sticky Situations
Role playing sticky situations is creating scenario where children have to solve problems by controlling emotions. Parents can choose any scenario where kids have to response, solve problem while navigating his emotions smoothly. In other words these are emotional rehearsal for kids to learn how to deal with frustration, anger, sadness in real life.
Parents should remember children’s approach to deal with the role play may not be right. So be patient, gentle and praise their performance. And then offer guidance to how to make the scenario more better but avoid giving too much of lecture. Because they may avoid playing role play from next time due to the fear of lecture.
7) Gratitude Jar or Drawing Corner
We need to understand that building resilience in kids means making them capable of bouncing back after the setbacks of life. A person can overcome the hurdles of life only when he/she has a positive outlook of life. And this positivity in life can be created by practicing these small resilience building activitites kids can do very easily like keeping a gratitude jar. Every day kids can put a note of good things. This will create a habit of optimistic thinking in every situations.
Encouraging children to draw not only enhance their creativity. But also helps them to regulate their emotions. Art helps people to get relief from stress. Drawing helps children to express their thoughts and feelings through paper and colour. It helps them to process their anxiety and make them feel calm.
You may like to read : Teaching Children About Gratitude and Appreciation
8) Micro Adventure Walks
Parents can take their small children ages 4 years and above to small outdoor walk with little adventures. Micro adventures are like a night walk, muddy walk or walking off trail. These small challenges take kids out of their comfort zone. And when they do these small adventurous excursion they face small hurdles too during their walk. They realise that hurdles can be overcome and it is normal to get roadblocks during the journey. Micro Adventure outdoor walk is one of the most interesting resilience building activities kids can really enjoy and also strengthen their resilience.
9) Puzzle Relay
Puzzle relay games are designed to play in teams. In this activity children make small teams and each child will take their turn to solve the puzzle and others wait patiently for their turn. Through these resilience building activities kids can learn perseverance, team work and also learns to control their emotions. They understand by being patient and being persistent they can overcome their obstacles.
10) Compliment Circle
Compliment circle is an activity where children will sit it a circle where they will give and receive compliment to each other. This resilience building activity can be done in home with family members as well in classrooms with peers. This activity strengthen children social bond with their peers and family members. Compliments boosts their self-esteem. They become more confident in life. Complimenting each other also foster respect and kindness for each other.
You may like to read : 30 Random Act Of Kindness Ideas That You Can Do
11) Stories Of Resilience And “What Would You Do?”
Stories are powerful tool for children to experience any character or situations. Stories of resilience are one most favourite resilience building activities kids can incorporate in their daily life. It helps children to experience the adversity through characters of the story. To make this activity more helpful, ask children questions related to the story.
Let them express their view and opinions what they would do in those situations. This will teach them to regulate their emotions and will also develop to cope up in life. Through stories children will learn to maintain clam in tough situations and practical ways to handle setbacks.
You may like to read : Healthy Coping Strategies For Kids
12) Big Feelings Bin
Big feelings bin is a strategy designed for children to process their heavy emotions through play. This activity helps children to learn and identify different emotions. And it also helps them to navigate the complex emotions. Big feelings bin also known as sensory bins. The main concept of the activity is the visual mapping of colours with specific emotions assigned for that colour.
If a child is happy, they will see the label emotion for happiness and the colour matching to it is pink. Then they will pick any pink item from the bin and put it in the pink container label as “happiness”. This helps them develop a sense of control over emotions.
13) Building Towers With Limited Blocks
The motto of giving limited blocks to children to build tower is to make them understand that failure is part of learning. When children make tower with limited blocks, the chance of tower falling is too high. Every time the tower falls, they understand that falling is part of construction process. It helps children to bounce back and be persistent towards their goal.
14) Musical Chairs and then Talk-Back
Musical chair is one of the low stress resilience building activities kids enjoy playing. This game helps to build emotional resilience in children. The game itself and the post game discussion is a two step process to maximise resilience in children. The sudden stop of the music in the game will disappoint a member (child) who is out of the game. Hence this moment teaches children to accept failure without being aggressive.
The post game discussion should include questions like “How did you feel when you were out of the game?”. And parent should also acknowledge them for handling the result of the game. It teaches children that struggle is real and resilience can help them to win over those struggles.
You may like to read :- Teaching Kids About Failure : 10 Proven Strategies
15) Daily Energiser
Activities like listening to song or dancing, stretching always boosts energy. So you can pick any energiser activity and encourage your child to do 5 to 10 minutes everyday. This will make kids more energetic and will take out negativity from mind. These short activities are like a mental reset for kids. This helps kids to come back to work with more concentration and this builds the foundation of resilience.
Resilience Building Activities Kids Can Turn Into Habits
Resilience building activities for kids are not one day game. These are very simple resilience building activities kids can enjoy doing but these activities should be practice frequently to turn them into habits. Because resilience is not bouncing back once, it is the character of the child to built who believe every hurdles can be overcome.
So parents need to keep it very simple but consistent like encouraging some activities daily in your child’s routine and some weekly. Like expressing gratitude daily, feelings-checkin can also be done daily when child returns home from school. Resilience stories can be shared during story time at night.
Weekly resilience building activities kids can do are like micro adventure walk, Obstacle course adventure. Many activities can also be practiced in classroom to encourage resilience and as well teamwork.
You may like to read :- Building Resilience In Preschoolers: Strategies For Ages 2-5
Things To keep In Mind If It Doesn’t Work
Now parenting doesn’t come with any single manual. As every kids are different so their parent’s approach may also differ. But practical tips and guidance will surely make your journey more easy. Many parents may find it difficult to make their child do these resilience building activities. Therefore lack of consistency may not get you the results you wished.
So parents have to keep few things in mind if it doesn’t work.
Conclusion
Patience is the key in parenting and consistency is the key for a child’s growth whether it is physically or mentally. As we keep telling, daily intake of healthy food makes our health strong and fit for lifelong, same when children take tiny steps towards building resilience. Once in while big speeches of resilience will not make a child resilient. Resilience building activities kids incorporate in their daily routine help them to learn to bounce back in life.
Choose any activities from the list and encourage your child to do regularly. And also be sure to check the post of Comprehensive framework of child resilience , the guide for parents and teachers to get a broader idea of how resilience works. This post is “do-it-now” for parents of small kids to start building resilience with easy and repeated activities. As you read there is no need of any costly equipments or setup to do these activities. Thses are just simple ways to give your child safe chances to try repeatedly, struggle and bounce back. That’s how resilience is built.
I will also encourage my readers to share which activities among these 15 you will pick for your child. Please share in the comment and with other parents too.
