Weekly Wellness Update
Week of April 27-May 1, 2020
Talking to Your Kids - Healthy Together
Resilience Matters
Building resilience — the ability to bounce back from setbacks and cope with life’s ups and downs — gives you and your children a well of reassuring and positive energy to draw upon in these challenging days.
It’s built by skills such as problem-solving, empathy and emotional regulation, which is the ability to show emotions in ways that won’t hurt oneself or others.
When kids grow up knowing they can trust adults to take care of them, their brains are wired to be more resilient.
“When you are resilient, you’ve got more in the bank to cope,” Hapchyn says. “It’s like a scale, with the positive things in a child’s life going to one side of the scale and the negative going to the other side. Resilience is the movable tipping point that gives a child the ability to have positive experiences outweigh the negative.”
One of the best ways to build up the positive side of the scale is through serve-and-return interactions — or back-and-forth communication — where you watch and respond to your child’s cues. “Be sensitive and observant to what children are trying to tell you.”
Serve and return helps build a strong relationship between you and your child, creating an emotional bond that gives them the strength, trust and security they need, especially during this pandemic.