Building Resilience in Your Child

The ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult situations is key to your child’s success not only in their formative years but in life beyond schooling. Not everything in life goes the way we want it to – the skills to face adversity can be the difference between persevering and giving up.

Recognising difficult situations

Examples of difficult situations that can occur in secondary schooling include but are not limited to: peer pressures, academic shortfalls, new environments, body image issues, puberty, social media, changing relationships, self and external expectations, and more. Students may set goals in any number of areas and work hard to reach them, only to face an outcome of a failed test, a broken friendship or an unsuccessful tryout for a sports team.

Learning to successfully deal with failure

It’s a common belief that resilience is built through failure. However, this is overly simplistic. It’s successfully dealing with failure that builds resilience, and this is where parents can play a key role as supporters. When a child is able to face adversity, pick themselves up after disappointment and try again, it proves to them that they can come out on the other side of a hard time. Then the next time they encounter an obstacle, they have more of a skillset to deal with it. Compare this to a child simply failing over and over and having no support to recover.

How parents can help

Parents can provide a listening ear, comfort and encouragement – all helpful to setting new goals and having the strength to try again. Take care to empathise rather than purely lecturing and allow your child the room to find their own solutions. As they move forward to the next challenge, your child will know they have you as backup if they stumble or need reinforcement. This safety ties in with the support provided at the College, ensuring there is a whole team of people who care about their progress.

Looking to the future

At Corpus Christi, our learner profile includes a focus on lifelong skills. We want our students to be creative and curious and able to connect and challenge. By building resilience, your child will be well-placed to navigate the ups and downs to come.