From Boohoo to Woohoo: Teach Your Children Resiliency in 8 Easy Steps

Posted on June 02, 2010 by Keyuri Joshi, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Coins have two sides that often represent choices. We might flip a coin to choose either pizza or tacos for dinner, or to decide who will be cleaning up after that dinner. We often hear kids using the coin as a tool for decision making such as “heads I go first, tails you go first”. But what happens when adults or kids need to make life’s harder choices? I’m referring to the kinds that involve how we will respond to and process difficult situations and emotions. Adults slave away at work to sometimes lose a lucrative business deal, or a child might train for weeks and fail to make the cut for an athletic team that they had their heart set on. At these times, our personalities kick in and sometimes react in a way which doesn’t feel so good. We react instead of responding and we’re often so emotionally distraught that flipping a coin doesn’t even occur to us. When a coin can’t help us choose, the skill of resiliency very well might.
Resilience helps us to recover effectively from life’s adversities. It is a vital tool to have in our arsenal of staying strong and seeing the optimism in even the most difficult of situations. Unfortunately, we can’t find resilience on the roadside like we might find a coin. We have to develop it and build it in our children. Any parent wants their child to be able to “handle” life’s difficult situations and emotions so let’s look at 8 easy concepts that we can use ourselves and teach our kids to take them from “boohoo” to “woohoo”!
1. Be Realistic. Goals and expectations need to be within the scope of realism whether we like it or not. In 2010, Princeton only accepted 17% of all Valedictorians who applied. That means that 83% of the highest achievers were rejected. Teaching our kids to focus on personal growth through an exciting journey of experience and maturity can lend an upside to any disappointment.
2. Be Flexible. Heaven knows the temper tantrum any age child (and some adults too) can have when they don’t get their own way. Flexibility, not to mention cooperation can help a great deal to ease frustration and create a win-win scenario. Here is what my parents taught me. During a very bad storm when the winds are blowing violently, a stiff tree is likely to snap, but a flexible tree will bend with the wind only to stand straight when the storm is over. Enough said.
3. Stubbornly refuse to let negative emotions take over your happy life! Let’s remember that we have the power to choose how we will react to any given situation. We can’t change the situation, but we can choose how we respond to it. We can let negative emotions make us miserable or we can choose to be positive! Happy people replace negative thoughts with positive ones and they look for the positive aspects of even the worst situations. It’s not easy, but every black cloud does have a silver lining if you look hard enough for it!
4. Utilize powerful positive role models. Do you have a special Saint, political leader, pro athlete, mentor, or other figure that totally inspires you or your child? Utilize this person to motivate your ability to be resilient. When the chips are down, imagine your role model defeating their difficulties and use their inspiration to lift yours or your children’s spirits. Pictures and quotes around the house are good reminders. One of my favorites is Mother Teresa.

5. Parents can be good role models for children. If you whine at every little grievance in your day, you will teach your children to do the same. So hold back your anger at crazy drivers, long lines, or perturbing people because your kids are watching your every move, and learning from you! Do take the time to role model your positivity toward life even when difficulty arises. Kids think of you as their hero, so act like one!
6. Be approachable. Your kids are not going to want to bring you any problems if you tell them to “get over it”, or if you start lecturing them on “what they should have, or could have done”. Like any human who has emotions, kids need to be heard. They need to get emotional baggage out of their system in order to find their resilience. Sometimes, the best thing a parent can do is provide a heart filled with love and two ears to just listen!
7. Allow kids to problem solve. If parents are always providing solutions for their kids, how on earth will they learn to do this for themselves? The only way kids can be resilient is if they are capable of strategizing their way to the outcomes they desire. Ask them how they want to solve their own problems and then let them try it out realizing that they may or may not succeed. This is how kids earn their own experience and wisdom. Parents… please use your judgment. Safety First!
8. Lastly, give your children positive feedback when they handle their problems with resilience. This is the greatest motivator of all to keep applying this potentially life altering skill.
Lucky is the child who can learn to respond instead of react, to choose positivity instead of misery, and to problem solve instead of stay stuck or use a coin to make life’s most important decisions! Here’s to resilience!
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Keyuri Joshi RN, MSN, is a Certified Parenting and Emotional Intelligence Coach. A “personal trainer” for parents, Keyuri assists moms or dads build and use a toolbox to achieve any goals they desire. She also teaches parents to build emotional and social intelligence skills in children. These are research proven “must have” skills which schools do not teach. Keyuri offers all parents a complimentary consultation and can be reached through her website, www.ontheballparent.com