“Fall Down 7 Times, Stand Up 8”

I have the pleasure of speaking at Westminster schools next week, chatting with parents about resilience in children. Resilience is something that comes up in my coaching work, regardless of the client’s age.

Resilience is the ability to get back to your baseline following upsetting or challenging circumstances - and it’s essential to the mental and physical health of individuals at all ages. However, resilience is arguably most crucial for children; resilience has its most significant development and reinforcement between the ages of 5 and 18, so that period of life is vital to ensuring it’s a core strength of your child. 

So, how do you develop resilience in your children? It’s a hard question to answer, because it’s a hard thing to teach. Resilience is best taught by modeling - showing your kids how to be resilient by being resilient yourself. 

As an example from my own life, I best modeled resilience for my son by being a single mom. He watched me run myself ragged getting him to all his extracurriculars while working late nights at home to make sure we had a roof over our heads. But he also watched me take care of myself, be honest about when I was struggling, and express all of my emotions, both good and bad, in healthy ways. He saw me go for walks while I was crying, because I was overwhelmed and overscheduled, only to come home with a smile on my face and ready to cook some dinner with him. He watched me tell him that I was feeling nervous before speaking engagements, only for it to get canceled, and then listened to me remind myself that it’s okay to feel defeated and that I’ll get the next one. He watched me anxiously pace the living room while I waited for my dissertation to be accepted, and then cry tears of joy. 

My son has watched me succeed and watched me fail - and watched me handle both of them with as much health and grace as I could. I did my best to model resilience for him, and he’s become an amazingly resilient man. 

If you have kids you want to model resilience for, whether they’re your own or you’re a teacher or a mentor in another way, reach out and schedule a free conversation with me. You might be surprised how you can benefit from developing that resilience in yourself, too.

Much Love, 

Unnatti Jain