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Emotional resilience is the ability to cope with stressful life experiences, disappointments, and challenges in an effective and meaningful way that helps to preserve self-esteem, build social aptitude, and prevent frustration, anger, and even depression. Emotional resilience learned early in life assists in recovering from misfortunes and disappointments, thus fostering emotional health.
Teaching your child to be emotionally resilient will help him / her be in control and build confidence to work through challenging situations effectively. Becoming emotionally resilient in childhood will provide a basic foundation for your child's emotional health in adolescence and adulthood.
Emotions shape your child's interactions with others and affect his or her behaviors resulting from those interactions. In order to prevent conflict, or deal with conflict effectively when it arises, your child should learn to understand his or her feelings, be able to identify them, and regulate them. It is important to teach children there is a whole gamut of emotions that can be expressed in various ways. However, knowing how to express them in a meaningful way will help your child in solving social conflicts and maintaining relationships. One way of promoting development of emotional competence is to help your child develop vocabulary that expresses feelings. Parents can also assist their children in recognizing various emotions and teaching them that emotions can be changed by their thinking.
Emotions are driven by behaviors. However, children must learn that emotions should not take control over their actions. It is crucial for children to know that expressing feelings helps in preventing and resolving problems. They need to be taught that bottled-up feelings lead to misunderstandings, anxiety, anger, and depression.
When your child does not express emotions, he or she is more likely to experience angry outbursts that might come from being sad, embarrassed, or frustrated. Perhaps, your child feels guilty about something he or she did, is afraid, or feels helpless and chooses to express those negative feelings of emotional stress with angry outbursts. This inability to deal with stress in a constructive way most of the time stems from the lack of understanding one's own emotions, emotions of others, and lacking the ability to express feelings effectively.
Signs of Emotional Fragility
– Regression of behaviors
– Withdrawal
– Excessive clinginess
– Bedwetting
– Nightmares
– Aggression
One of the most important things a parent can do to foster a child's healthy emotional development is to promote positive family communication. That includes positive reinforcement, which is praising your child for positive behaviors, giving encouragement, and avoidance of negative criticism when expected results are not achieved. Also, providing consistency is extremely important for a child's emotional health, as it aids in avoiding ambiguity and uncertainty. If a child knows what's expected of him or her, they will most likely comply, thus avoiding frustration, anger, and possibly humiliation.
Younger children might be more open and willing to express their feelings. In adolescence, family communication might become more challenging as the teen tries to suppress their feelings in an attempt to resolve them alone. Parenting teenagers requires patience and the ability to be supportive. Frequently, conversation with your teen at home might be extremely difficult. However, your teen may try to open up while riding with you in a car where there is no eye contact, thus the confrontation seems to be less intimidating. Building a sound foundation of emotional resilience in childhood will help your adolescent achieve emotional health. Should getting through to your child become impossible, or he or she becomes withdrawn and exhibits signs of emotional instability, don't be afraid to seek help. You may start by talking to another family member, a friend, or a counselor.
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Source by Monika B. Pis, Ph.D.