8 Tips for Nurturing Resilience in Your Child with Trauma or Neurodivergence
For children who have experienced trauma or who are neurodivergent, it’s crucial to foster resilience in them. Resilience helps build self-esteem, allowing you to develop healthy coping skills (self-regulation), learn from mistakes, and form positive relationships with others.
In this article, we take a look at how you can guide your children toward building resilience for healing and creating a healthy and happy life.
Create a Supportive and Nurturing Environment
Providing a safe, supportive, and nurturing environment is the foundation to building resilient children. You can do this by spending quality, dedicated time with your child, showing them that you truly care about them. Also be aware of your child’s feelings, relationships, academics, and their whereabouts so you can help identify potential problems and offer support and guidance.
Provide Structure and Consistency
Providing consistency and structure will help your child have clarity on expectations you have of them. A daily routine can help provide plenty of structure, so keeping a school time wake schedule, even in the summers, can help them feel safe in the consistency of a schedule. You should also be consistent in how you handle outbursts and problems. Remember, some flexibility will be needed during transition times or times of distress, but schedules should help reduce these periods of dysregulation.
Foster Positive, Safe Relationships
Having a strong and positive relationship with you isn’t the only type of relationship you should encourage for your child. Encourage your child to build positive friendships with peers as well as strong social connections with teachers and other adults in their life.
Teach Empathy
Empathy can help improve relationships and help your child feel empowered. Model empathy toward others, teaching your child to listen and understand the feelings of others. Then teach your child to express themselves effectively. Further that empathy by encouraging your child to help others. This will help your child feel empowered and can turn feelings of hopelessness into hopefulness. Helping others can create a sense of self-worth while having a positive impact. But it can also help teach your child that it is okay to ask for help when you need it.
Develop Problem-Solving and Coping Skills
Teaching your child skills for problem solving and coping (self-regulation) can help them get through tough times. Help your child learn problem-solving by identifying issues, brainstorming solutions, and guiding them in making choices.
You can encourage healthy risk-taking by allowing them to take on new challenges in a supportive and safe environment, like trying out a new hobby. STEM or STEAM activities are a great thing you can do together with your child to help them gain self-confidence and resilience.
Guide them in helping to manage their emotions and stress by teaching them how to recognize and name their feelings. Help them learn healthy coping mechanisms (self-regulation techniques) such as deep breathing, meditation, or talking to a trusted adult. As part of this, also teach your child good self-care, such as eating properly, exercising, and getting sufficient sleep.
Finally, as part of problem-solving and coping skills, encourage independence in your child. Allow them to make their own decisions and solve problems on their own, as appropriate for their age and maturity. This will give them the opportunity to take the skills you’ve been nurturing in them for a test drive, which is an important part of growing up!
Nurture a Positive Self-View
When you feel hopeless, it can be hard to see what’s good in the world or what you are good at. Help your child to remember times they have successfully handled hardships in the past. Not only does this nurture a positive self-view, but it can help your child learn to trust themselves to handle future challenges. It is a great way to nurture self-discovery and to recognize their own strengths. When we have confidence in ourselves, we can do great things!
Model a Hopeful Perspective
When we are dealing with painful situations, it can be hard to see beyond the current situation. For children, it can be especially difficult to look at challenges in a broader context with a longer-term perspective. Model having a hopeful perspective of the future. While you don’t want to be “Pollyanna” about everything, being optimistic can help your child see the good things in life, even during hard times. Practicing gratitude can be a great way to keep a hopeful perspective together as a family.
Model Resilient Behaviors
Finally, children learn a lot by watching the adults in their life, particularly their parents. It is key that you model these resilient behaviors. Don’t be afraid to share your own challenges and how you learned to cope. It’s important that your children learn that everyone struggles and that you should always keep trying. Also, embrace mistakes. Children are bound to make them, as it is a normal part of life. So take these in stride and turn them into a teachable moment, which is crucial for growth.
Key Takeaways
Nurturing resilience in your child who is neurodivergent or who has experienced trauma can help them to become independent, healthy, happy, and grow into adults who lead fulfilling lives. Teaching self-regulation techniques, encouraging positive relationships, and modeling resilient behavior are all ways to help nurture resilience in your child.