Building emotional resilience is one of the most important aspects of a child’s early development. It is through emotional resilience that children learn to manage ups and downs, and learn that they can handle whatever life brings their way. We know that the first 5 years of life are key in a child’s development, and that this is a prime opportunity to focus on children’s emotional wellbeing and resilience.
While formal learning is of course important, if a child is feeling insecure, lacking in confidence or isn’t able to persevere in the face of a knockback, their time and energy will not be free to focus on learning. That’s why, when we think about how we can best prepare children for school, we focus on the prime areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage:
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Physical Development
Although the current lockdown is presenting challenges for everyone, including children and families, this also brings opportunity. Here are our top tips for supporting your child’s emotional resilience.
Name Feelings
One of the keys to emotional resilience is for a child to be able to talk about their feelings and figure out a solution to the problem they are experiencing.
Once a child becomes aware of their feelings and is able to name them, their brain is more able to process those emotions and they can move on more easily.
Take opportunities throughout daily life to name and explore feelings. It’s important that all feelings are seen as acceptable - often children consider ‘anger’ to be inappropriate because of the way they express themselves when angry.
Children need to know anger is acceptable, the trick is learning how to express it safely and calmly.
Validate Feelings
Simply validating how a child is feeling can be immensely powerful. We all need to feel heard, and to know that someone understands what we are experiencing. Validation of feelings is helpful whenever a child is in the midst of a ‘big emotion’.
The challenge is that we often want to fix how children are feeling; and at other times we find it hard to be understanding when the behavioural response from the child is one of anger.
By validating a child’s feelings, we are not saying all behaviour is acceptable; we are saying all feelings are acceptable. Once a child feels validated and accepted, we can move on to teaching tools for appropriate expression and management of feelings.
Just a note - we do need to be careful not to make assumptions about how a child is feeling - telling anyone they are angry when actually they are feeling immense sadness can be just as frustrating as not having your feelings validated at all!
Role Model
Young children have remarkable minds that enable them to learn constantly from the world around them. They not only learn to walk and talk through observation and practice; they also learn about emotions, communication and resilience.
Role modelling definitely doesn’t mean adults have to be perfect!
When we are experiencing an emotion, we label this in front of children and enable them to see that even the most challenging of emotions can be survived. Often adults are afraid for children to see difficult emotions. While we need to be mindful of what we expose children to, if we experience sadness or frustration and can role model how to manage these positively, this can be helpful for children to see.
Teaching Tools for Coping
When difficult situations arise, very few of us instinctively know how to manage them. Instead, we have learned how to cope through years of trial and error. Just imagine if someone had taught us coping strategies at a young age!
The key to helping children to learn effective tools, is to make sure they are truly effective. Teaching a child to breathe deeply is a great tool - however if a child is experiencing anger and frustration, they often need to move their bodies in the first instance, before they can engage in a more mindful activity.
Some examples of coping strategies for children might include:
Squeeze something you can hold in your hand
Learn about breathing and how this can help us stay calm
Learn appropriate ways to express physical frustration
Practice how to tell someone what you are feeling
Draw or paint how you feel
Designate a quiet space to go to (this is NOT a time out - it is somewhere to go voluntarily to take some time, and maybe sit with a favourite cuddly toy or a book)
Finally…
Do bear in mind that all of these need lots of practice. We can’t simply tell a child to come and tell us how they are feeling and expect them to do it straight away. We all know first hand how hard it can be as adults to express our feelings to someone when we are in the midst of difficult emotions. Children may need months (and years!) of practice at learning appropriate tools for managing their emotions. The early years are the ideal time to start practicing!