10 Ways to Build Emotional Resiliency in Your Children

1. Communication is key. Take time to really get to know your children’s interests and disinterests. This shows you value their opinion, care about their individuality, and are eager to learn and grow together.

2. Acknowledge your mistakes and be quick to admit your faults and ask for forgiveness; this will teach your children that failure is a necessary part of learning and they will not be afraid to make them. They learn that humility is part of a strong heart!

3. Validate their feelings/emotions no matter how silly you may think it is. Emotions come from a place and when you acknowledge their emotions, children learn its purpose and value in their everyday experiences. Furthermore, when you take time to acknowledge their emotions, you are teaching your children that noticing others’ pain and suffering allows them to be outwardly focused—you are building and strengthening their empathic understanding.

4. Listen to what they have to say no matter how mundane or unimportant it may seem to you. Give them your full attention when you do so! With this, your children will learn the value of empathetic listening. They will grow up understanding the importance of paying attention to those around them.

5. Reprimand in private and praise in public. Be generous with praise. Your children are breathing, living, feeling human beings. Treat them with the utmost respect even in times when reprimanding them for their mistakes. Children will learn that crucial conversations can help achieve mutual goals.

6. Shower your children with kind, gentle, and respectful words. When children grow up in a home full of kind words, they will more likely use these same kind words in their self-talk and in their conversations outside the home.

7. Respect your children’s autonomy and right to self-determination. Even at a young age, children value their autonomy. Giving them choices and allowing them to choose for themselves teaches them that they can exercise their right and be able to think for themselves.

8. Monkey see monkey do. If your children see you cower to abuse, they will grow up thinking it is ok to abuse and be abused, but if they see you stand up for yourself and live a life of integrity and principle, chances are, they will grow up understanding the value of self-respect and self-advocacy. If your children see you not pitching in in the household chores, you are teaching them it is ok to be lazy, but if they see your work and talk about it positively, they will learn the value of industry and the joy that comes from earning their keep.

9. Foster a growth mindset. When mistakes happen, instead of blaming and lamenting what could have been, explore what could be—what could be learned from the mistakes and what different approaches can be utilized next time. A growth mindset teaches children to be creative in problem-solving and how to be flexible and not fear change.

10. Love, love, love!

Where love is, it is less likely to foster self-image insecurity in your children. Knowing that you love, understand, and accept who they are, will build a strong emotional maturity and security in your children at an early age, which they will take with them as they grow.

So when life gets rough, they can always turn to the confidence of their parents’ love for them to help sustain them through.