“Military kids are resilient,” a proclamation echoed throughout our community to describe the most vulnerable among us. Resilience is a topic that has long been discussed within the military community and has been applied not only to military kids, but spouses, and service members alike. The ability to “bounce back,” is the common ideology used to describe resilience in practice yet this conceptualization is almost the antithesis of effective resilient practices. Here are three ways we can empower our children to adopt resilient mindsets and behaviors.
Moving Through Instead of Bouncing Back
You are not a rubber band. What we don’t often speak to is the process of moving through hardship when we discuss how to be resilient. For many this process has been described as merely pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, squaring shoulders, and thinking optimistic and positive thoughts about the future in order to go back to where we stood before trial or struggle ensued. While these practices are noble, merely focusing on positive thoughts disregards the bravest and most crucial components of building resilience. Our experiences change us, and they were meant to do that. For our children, this means allowing them to experience difficulty and most importantly sitting with them in difficulty and resisting the urge to shield them completely from it or tell them they shouldn’t feel whatever it is they are feeling. This means allowing space for uncomfortable feelings including anger, sadness, and disappointment. Our children need to know that there are no good or bad emotions and that validating ALL emotional experiences is an important practice in moving through uncomfortable feelings effectively. We call this emotion regulation, the practice of acknowledging and giving space to emotions without avoiding or over-identifying with them.
Name It To Tame It
When children can regulate their emotions, they build a sense of emotional competency and are prepared for a world that will constantly disappoint and challenge them. A key first step in being able to regulate emotion is having the language to label and name feelings. Assigning language to emotions enables us to validate how we feel. I asked my 11-year-old daughter to help me explain our practice of “name to tame it,” she explains,” We have to talk about our emotions or they get too big to handle, specifically anger and sadness. When these emotions feel too big sometimes we do things that don’t make us feel good later.” The process of labeling empowers our children to talk about how they feel rather than act out how they feel…sometimes.
Safe Spaces For Feeling Equals Safe Places For Failing
“Where do you feel safe enough to fail?” My daughter’s answer: “I know it’s okay to fail around people I trust, people who I know are caring and honest. In school, we have a sign that says FAIL stands for ‘first attempt in learning.’ I know that it is okay to fail where these people are because they are honest about their failures too.” Our children need safe spaces to fail in order to learn that perfection is unattainable, and failure is unavoidable. More importantly, our children need us to model these concepts to them. As parents, we have to acknowledge our failures. This involves apologizing and practicing accountability when we get it wrong while simultaneously choosing to move away from negative self-talk and adopt concepts of self-compassion in order to move forward. Teaching our children that failure is the beginning of the learning process rather than the limit of their abilities can aid them in meeting difficulty instead of shying away from it. A common concept used to describe this process is preparing our children for the path rather than preparing the path for our children. Children who feel safe enough to fail, are also the children who feel empowered to try.
Opportunities to mold resilient kids are plentiful in military life, however, opposition and challenges are not responsible alone for producing children that know how to respond to difficulty and thrive beyond it. Raising resilient children is the work of caregivers and communities who have the courage to practice these concepts themselves. Modeling resilience then, may just be one of our most important responsibilities as military families.