Resilience Series Part 2: Keep Things in Perspective

Article at a Glance:

  • Keeping a broader perspective in mind can help children and teens persevere through hard times.
  • Sharing different examples or experiences or can bring hope for the future. 
  • Resilience is a skill, and like any skill, it can be strengthened through practice.

In this series, we’ll be looking at ways to help teach children and teens resilience. It can be difficult to process disappointment, trauma, stress, anxiety, or depression and all of the negative feelings that can come with it. Resiliency will help children and teens deal with these negative feelings in a healthy and appropriate manner. Resilience is a skill, and like any skill, it can be strengthened through practice. 

Sometimes, when we’re in a situation, it can be hard to see a way that things will work out well. Helping your children and teens to have a broader perspective can help them persevere through hardships by allowing them to see there is hope in the future. 

  • Share similar experiences and how your perspective has shifted between then and now to show what feels hopeless now is just a bump in the road. 
  • Ask them to think about what opportunities or tools may become available to them as adults that they don’t have access to now, and how would those things help to give them a broader perspective. 
  • Use examples from history to show that current events will always resolve themselves one way or another and life always goes on. 
  • Show them how to take a step back and think critically about their situations and identify missing information. 
  • Ask them to identify an experience in their own lives that seemed terrible at first, but ended up working out for the best.

There have been many pandemics in ancient and modern history. Humanity has not only survived, but made scientific advances as a result. The improvements in sanitation, vaccines, and disease containment—including the things we’re doing to slow Covid-19— all build on what we’ve learned from past pandemics.

Keeping things in perspective is a hallmark of strong resilience. Teaching your children and teens this skill, and modeling it for them yourself, will give them a powerful tool that will serve them well for years to come.

Don’t miss the first article in our Building Resilience series:
Part 1: Letting It Go

And the rest of the Building Resilience series:
Part 3: Maintain a Routine
Part 4: Goal Setting

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