As any parent knows, there is simply so much advice available these days through the internet, social media, and friends that it is difficult to know where to turn for accurate and useful information. Contemporary research on effective child-rearing, however, has established a consensus around the importance of resilience as a critical factor for a child’s development.

Resilience involves both physical and mental aspects of your child’s well-being. Learning how to provide your child with the proper stimulus and environment to optimize their resilience will provide them with many benefits throughout their life. Building resilience in children is critical for ensuring that they turn into healthy and successful adults.

To explore this concept a little more, let’s look at some specific reasons why resilience is important for a child’s development.

Allows Your Child To Understand The World

Providing your child with opportunities to develop their resilience gives them a better understanding of how the world works. By incorporating occasions for healthy risk-taking in your child’s daily life, they will better understand what they are capable of and what the realities of the world entail.

For example, encouraging your child to try a new sport that they are unfamiliar with will expose them to an unfamiliar scenario that involves very little chance of harm to them. However, breaking your child out of their comfort zone will encourage them to grow and learn continually throughout their life. By taking some of the fear away from the unknown, your child will become more comfortable with independently understanding the world.

Generates Positive Emotional Connections

Resilience highlights the importance of positive emotional connections in a child’s development. While it is good for a child to develop into an independent person, it is also essential that your child understands that other people can be relied on in times of need.

By establishing a caring relationship with your child and providing them with a loving environment to grow up in, they will learn to understand that no matter what happens to them throughout their day that they can find refuge in the people that they care about.

Modeling resilience as a parent will also provide your child with a better means of coping with their emotional states. If you make the effort to avoid angry displays and outbursts, your child will gradually understand that these behaviors are not appropriate.

Teaches Problem-Solving Skills

Bringing resilience into your child’s development will also highlight many opportunities for building your child’s problem-solving skills. Rather than stepping in to solve each of your child’s problems however minor, it is important for you as a parent to let them work things out from time to time. Try to avoid fixing everything for your child but let them come to you with their solutions. Together, you can discuss what the problem is and lead your child gently towards sorting it out for themselves.

Raise Them Right

Fostering resilience in your child is one of the most beneficial things you can do to ensure that they will grow to become an independent and successful adult. The habits that you foster in your child during their younger years will provide them with valuable strategies and mental heuristics that will assist them later in life.

Bringing up your child well involves many hours spent wondering whether the things you are doing are working. However, bringing resilience into the equation takes some of the pressure off and highlights how important it is for your child to discover some things for themselves under your watchful eye. It is important to know that as long as you provide your child with a caring environment and make the effort to learn continually, you will be on the right track.