Resiliency

What is resiliency?

Resilience is something nearly everyone hopes to build: the ability to handle challenges, recover from setbacks, and keep moving toward our goals. This is equally important for students because even young students face difficult experiences, from traumatic events to big changes in their lives.

Several definitions help clarify the concept. The American Psychological Association describes resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress.“

Lee, Nam, Kim, Kim, Lee, and Lee define resiliency as the personal qualities and skills that allow a person to function in a healthy, successful way, or to adapt, during significant adversity or a disruptive life event.

Merriam-Webster offers a simpler definition: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune, adversity, or change.

Together, these definitions show that resilience is the capacity to adapt and recover when life gets hard. It isn’t about avoiding difficulty, but about having the skills and support to work through it.

Protective Factors

There are several different characteristics or traits connected to resiliency. Sometimes these are considered protective factors because they can help to protect against some of the damaging effects of adverse experiences (minor or major).

While some are adult-focused, or family/community-specific, there are some that apply well to kids and that can be supported in a school setting:

• Sense of belonging/having positive connections to others
• Setting goals
• Problem-solving skills
• A positive or hopeful outlook
• Understanding personal locus of control
• Identifying and using a support system
• Self-regulation (behavioral and emotional)
• Being able to talk to your family about your feelings
• Feeling supported by friends
• Having at least two non-parent adults take genuine interest in you
• Self-efficacy (which is also connected to goal setting, locus of control, and coping)

Many of those elements are developed through strong and secure relationships between students and between students and teachers. The everyday conversations that teachers lead in schools also play a huge role here – modeling, reminding, coaching, etc.

How do we develop resiliency in kids?

Intentionally developing protective factors or resiliency through explicit lessons or activities might look like proactive tier 1 programming or reactive tier 2 supports. Strategies that help students with adverse experiences are almost always strategies that help all kids and that means that these strategies can be used with individuals, in group counseling, or for whole classes.

Build Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation isn’t just one skill but actually a set of skills that a kiddo needs to acquire. Many students need help with emotional regulation, but don’t help them with all of these steps

1. Understand Different Feelings: At the most basic level, students need to be able to understand different emotions. What are comfortable vs. uncomfortable feelings? Can we have more than one feeling at a time? What words do we use for feelings? Are there different amounts of feelings?
2. Identify Emotions in Self: Once students understand feelings, they need to be able to recognize them in themselves. Students can’t take care of their feelings if they don’t know what they’re experiencing. The best way to help students with this is through modeling and reflecting. It’s also important for students to be able recognize physical cues in their body about feelings.
3. Accept Their Emotion: For many reasons, students may not feel like it’s okay to have their feelings. Maybe feelings aren’t talked about at home, or they only think about feelings as “good” and “bad”. Or maybe they associate their worry and anger with times they’ve gotten into trouble or felt out of control, so they are uncomfortable acknowledging them. The way adults at school talk to students about feelings plays a huge role. Explicitly adding “and that’s okay” when reflecting their feelings (eg. “You’re really frustrated right now and that’s okay.”) is one way. Explaining the why behind feelings: telling students how fear keeps us safe and anger helps us know when something wrong is happening, is another way.
4. Express Their Feeling: Sometimes simply expressing a feeling, verbally or otherwise, can help to regulate one’s emotions. One way to help students practice this is through I-statements.
5. Use Regulation or Coping Skills: There’s a lot to this step.
   1. Students learn about and understand how to use/do different regulation/coping tools/skills.
   2. Practice using them.
   3. Decide which one(s) they think are helpful.
   4. Students actually use the tools/skills when they are emotionally dysregulated.

Teach Locus of Control

When things aren’t going as expected, or they are challenging, teaching children about their locus of control is hugely impactful. Firstly, because there are almost always elements still within their control. It may only be their own thoughts and actions but those two things can make a difference. And, when children incorrectly label some things as in their control (that are not), they become even more stressed.

Another direct way to help students understand this idea is by asking them to label different concepts and problems as in or out of their control.

Give Students Meaningful Opportunities for Responsibility

In Relationship, Responsibility, and Regulation , Kristin Souers said:

“Intense focus on external factors supersedes students’ ability to internalize how they affect their surroundings. This impedes the development of responsibility.”

When a student is constantly worrying about things in the world around them, and/or when they’re constantly at a heightened sentence of alert, they don’t mentally or emotionally have the chance to think about the impacts of their own actions. It is a very different conceptualization of lack of responsibility, making it even more clear that responsibility is both a lagging skill and an experiential need.

One way we can use this idea is to give students jobs in the classroom or the school. This might look like: PE assistant, gardener, pencil sharpener, technology manager, etc. School jobs can be used as a tier 2 behavior intervention for those who may need a responsibility boost and/or those who may need a sense of control or connection.

Teach Optimism and Cognitive Coping

When children have a positive or hopeful outlook, they aren’t stuck in the muck of whatever their life circumstances are. They believe that good things are coming and that they can handle the tough stuff in the meanwhile.

Cognitive behavioral theory suggests that helping students identify helpful thoughts they can have in different situations is really powerful.

This skill is proactive because practicing helpful thinking when things are calm builds habits that are ready when challenges arise. It is also an in-the-moment tool, since a child who can pause and say, “I can handle this,” or “This feeling won’t last forever,” has a way to steady themselves when stress hits.

Learn How to Use a Support System

Children, and adults alike, are hardwired for connection. When a challenge arises, having and using a support system becomes even more valuable.

When a child knows there are people they can count on, such as family members, teachers, counselors, challenges feel less overwhelming. A sense of safety allows children to manage stress without feeling that they must face it alone. Consistent, predictable relationships also give children a stable base to return to when things feel uncertain.

Children who practice reaching out to others learn that seeking support is a healthy, effective way to handle difficulty, a habit that serves them well into adulthood.

Resources to Put This Into Practice