After a long tiring day when you keep something in the oven to cook for dinner and then suddenly you get a burn smell. And you realise you got trap into a stressful moment. I am sure this kind of situation is very relatable to us. Our children are watching every time how do we react to these stressful situations of our daily life. And if we want our children to be strong and resilient we need to admit our own mistakes and stay calm. Children are better in absorbing our reactions so it is all about how to model resilience as a parent.
We, parents always give tones of advices to our children and very few of them are heard by the little souls. But they are very efficient in copying their parent’s actions and reactions. So parents should always be an example for children what they want to teach to their children. Problems are inevitable but the way we respond to the problems set an example for them.
Modelling resilience as a parent is not hiding our feelings but validating our emotions and how to recover from them. When we stay calm during tough moments, children learn that things may go wrong but there are ways to try for things to be right. And by staying calm, we also get right thoughts to act.
In the previous post of child resilience framework, everything about building resilience in children have been explained in details. Age specific activities for building resilience is also there as part of resilience building tool for parents and children. As I mentioned above children always have the intention to follow their parent’s actions. So, model resilience as a parent is one of the most important part of teaching resilience to children.
Why Your Reactions Matter More Than Your Advice
Parent’s verbal advice often fails as child absorbs parent’s immediate reaction. The term “Do It Because I Said” doesn’t work as it fails to create a trust between parent and child. Only instructions to children without implementation by parents themselves doesn’t lays a strong foundation in children. As it suppresses children’s emotion without any approach to find the root cause or solution.
Children actually learn by imitation. They tend to imitate people around them. And this is because of the science of mirror neurons. During early childhood, the mirror neurons of child’s brain cell help them to mimic activities they see around. Children replicate action like speech patterns, everyday actions, laughing or crying etc. Children learn many new physical skills by watching and imitating others. This also helps to develop empathy among children.
As children observe every actions of their elders, they sense the calmness of their parents too during stressful situations. They also learn to handle their own stress. And so parents model emotional regulation by co regulation where they help children to deal with their big feelings.
You may like to read :- 15 Resilience Building Activities Kids Can Start Today
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Three Everyday Traps Parents Fall Into
Model resilience as a parent may confuse you by thinking of being perfect every time in-front of our kids. No it is certainly not of being perfection. It is being real to yourself and your children. Setting an example before children or being their role model always creates a false pressure on parents. And parents in the urge to prove perfection fall into the trap of perfection that is not at all required.
The Perfectionisim Trap
Striving of being perfect all the time to be children’s role model takes the wrong route in parenting. It is neither beneficial to children nor parents. Trying to be flawless all the time sets unrealistic standards for children. And parents have the pressure to be perfect in-front of their children. Extreme perfectionism may develop fear of failure in children.
Hiding stress or frustration from children gives wrong indication to children. So as a parent, make feelings normalise. If you are feeling stressful, let your child know that, so that they can also understand everyone goes through heavy feelings. And we need to overcome all heavy feelings of our lives.
You may like to read :- Teaching Kids About Failure : 10 Proven Strategies
Impulsiveness And Guilt Trap
Sometimes parents overreacts and then feel guilty for their behaviour. They regret their behaviour and start feeling bad as it may set a bad example before children. But their impulsiveness will not set poor example rather their guilt will have bad impact on children. Some moments may trigger parents but for that parents should not hide or feel guilty of their impulsive reactions. Instead they should own their mistakes and apologise to their child.
As a parent, we should not forget that we are human beings with all emotions. So embrace the feelings and recover from them. There is no shame in feeling heavy emotions. You will always feel better when you share your emotions with your children.
Trap of The Urge To Solve Immediatly
Parents often make the mistake of rushing to solve problems immediately. This spontaneous action of solving problems doesn’t give scope to children to try to face the challenges. And they lack problem solving skill. This situations need a little team work of parent and child.
Parents should encourage children to try new ways to find solutions. This helps them to cope with challenges demonstrating how to navigate challenges with patience and positivity.
You may like to read :- Building Resilience In Preschoolers : Strategies For Ages 2-5
You may like to read :- Healthy Coping Strategies For Kids : Practical Tips For Parents
How To Model Resilience As A Parent In Real Time
We always want our children to be emotionally strong. And the development of emotional strength doesn’t require long sessions of lecture and advices that children don’t pay much attention. If you ever think of how to model resilience as a parent, just keep one thing in mind. Children absorb your reactions rather listening to your words of advice. So here is the actionable framework for modelling resilience as a parent that will help parents during their stressful moments.
Step 1 : Pause And Name It
The first step of this framework is to reset ourselves. Parents are also humans and they cannot be perfect every time. So rather taking the baggage of perfection , do focus on the reset button of your mood. It is very obvious, you may feel low during hard times.
During overwhelming situations, accept how you are feeling. And vocalise your feelings to your child. Let them know mommy is feeling frustrated right now. And you take a break, pause and relax yourself. This will teach your child how to react during tough time.
Children when see their parents being calm during tough times they will understand things have to be like this only. Hence when you wonder about how to model resilience as a parent, don’t think to hide your feelings. Accept your feelings, name it to your child and take a pause to process the moment.
Step 2 : Repair And Reframe
There is no perfection in parenting, parents may loose temper during some moments. So first of all, don’t burden yourself with parental guilt of loosing temper. In this step of modelling resilience as a parent, loosing temper is not the issue. Focus on the next step that you should take after loosing temper.
Always take the accountability of your actions. Apologise to your child and model the intention of taking accountability of our actions. Your mindset shifts towards positisity once you apologise for your temperament. This mindset teaches your child to be responsible for their mistakes and attitude to correct that.
Step 3 : Problem- Solve Out Loud
This is the final step of modelling resilience as a parent. After taking a pause, being responsible for loosing temper and apologising, the final step is to solve the problem. So when parents think of how to model resilience as a parent, they should model how they manage their emotions. And their approach to solve a problem.
Problem solve out loud means expressing our inner thoughts of problem solving to our children. Solving out loud makes kids hear out how their parents overcome frustrating and challenging moments. You can include your child while brainstorming ideas to solve. As children have the tendency to copy, they will use this coping skill in their lives too.
You may like to read :- Teaching Kids About Failure : 10 Proven Strategies
Real World Scenarios : What This Looks Like
It’s time to apply the modelling resilience framework practically through few real world scenarios. So you don’t need ant setup or find a perfect day to model resilience to your child. Many everyday activities can teach your child how to react those situations and solve them.
Scenario 1 : The Morning Rush
Let’s take an example of the morning rush that we all have to face many days. You have to drop kids at school, clock is ticking so fast and traffic is heavily jammed. This is the trigger moment for parents to loose temper or just bang the steering wheel and yelling.
This situation will surely make us feel annoyed. But let’s remember step 1. Hence we should take deep breath while waiting in the traffic and express your frustration to your child and say that it is very annoying to wait like this but it is not in our hand.
And to reframe the situation you can turn on the music to uplift the mood or have some hearty conversation with your child.
So when you deal these triggered moments with calm and patience children takeaway as lesson and they also incorporate this behaviour in their life.
Scenario 2 : The Household Mishap
There are many minor accidents take place in every households like burning dinner or splitting milk and many other like this. These are trigger moments for us that urges us to shout or scream on ourselves.
These incidents are inevitable, so let’s go according to our framework for modelling resilience as a parent. First of all, make yourself understand mistakes can happen. And then if your child is around ,share your feelings with them. Tell them by “mistake milk spilled or I burnt the dinner by mistake, let’s figure out what we can do next.”
Takeaway from this scenario is that a child understands that mistakes happen and there are many other ways to solve a problem. We may get failures but let’s not fear it face it with new ways.
Conclusion
Raising resilient kids are not avoiding feelings for kids but to validate all the feelings. The key takeaway here is to model resilience as a parent is not trying to be perfect but acknowledging our feelings and support our child when they stumble. Practicing them to rise up after each fall with love and support. And these all can be achieved by resilience activities and coping skills for children, so to make it easy for my readers don’t forget to check the child resilience framework.
And do let me know what is one stressful moment this week where you had to pause and reset in front of your kids? I would love to read your moments to experience and learn together with other parents.
To help you, I’ve put together a Free Daily Resilience Tracker PDF. It’s a simple, printable tool designed to help your child log daily emotional resets and model healthy coping mechanisms.
