Julika Van Stackelberg (Raising Resilient Kids)
Parenting coach Julika explains how to raise resilient children, equipping them to navigate life’s challenges. She highlights that resilience involves bouncing back, adapting, and ...
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How Can We Teach Children to Regulate Emotions?
So the first thing we want to be able to do is to learn how to regulate when we are reading ourselves, getting into intense emotions, what can we do to reduce the intensity of the emotions in order to get back into that zone? So as I mentioned, practising mindfulness or yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, anything that calms the nervous system or that may sometimes inspire the nervous system. So if we're feeling depressed, for example, for some time we may need to go outside and move our bodies and introduce a little bit more movement in order to get back into the zone where we're able to experience this regulation. And so we can do this with our children together. We can support our children in their coping mechanisms and learning how to read themselves. You can go and print out a list of feelings and put them on your fridge or wherever, and ask your child what they're feeling and experiencing in different situations. So basically becoming able to read your own emotions, which is called interception, and the sensations that come along with them is an important tool that help you recognise how you can get into your resilience.
How Does Involving Children in Problem Solving Build Resilience?
And then think also about ways that you can allow your child to contribute to finding solutions. When children feel some sense of control or purpose, they're able to experience value and in your family, and they experience a sense of belonging, which allows them, again, to be able to get back into their resilience zones more easily.
What is resilience and how is it connected to brain development?
So first of all, there is no magic pill and resilience is not a do with yourself project. Resilience is really, yes, it's bouncing back and it's being able to adjust and adapt to difficult situation. And it's also bouncing forward, being able to grow from a difficult situation and focusing on the future with a bright perspective. And resilience is oftentimes associated with intense adversity. So we really want to be able to expand the bandwidth of what I call our resilient zone. We want to be able to function and like I mentioned, bounce back, adjust to change, and then bounce forward, grow from situations. And so this is very much related to brain development in children. We all have the capacity to be resilient, but it's a quality like many other qualities that needs to be nurtured as opposed to be debilitated.