Fostering Resilience
Our Somerville House vision is educating girls to be fearless leaders of change, developing excellence, confidence and connection to their individual purpose.
Throughout this past week, I have enjoyed conversations with students and new parents and interviews with prospective staff members, where we have discussed the aspirational value of developing fearless girls. There are so many Somerville House opportunities for your daughter to develop and try out challenging and rewarding and fun experiences.
Director of Sport, Mr Andrew McCabe, recently shared that there were 76 personal best performances at the QGSSSA Track and Field Championships, held at the end of Term 3. Congratulations to our athletes and Mr Andre Sinclair, Director of Athletics and Cross Country, for these impressive outcomes. We acknowledge and appreciate the courage and resilience of all athletes who represented Somerville House at these Championships.
If you google “resilience” you will find about 149,000,000 results. It is obvious there is a huge interest in this area. Resilience is particularly important for all students, when they make application for a leadership role or complete an assessment, in helping deal with challenges and disappointments. Some children have a natural resilience, which helps them to be mentally and psychologically tough. If a child is resilient by nature, she will get straight back up after a setback or disappointment. However, not every child has such natural resilience.
Michael Grose has published a range of resilience-building ideas and parent advice here.
Grose asserts that most of the research shows that resilience can be nurtured and developed, particularly when parents themselves are resilient and they actively foster it in their child. Grose shares some tips for adults to help build the four basic skillsets of resilience in our children.
Building independence, problem-solving, optimism and social connection means that parents need to coach children through some of their more challenging moments and reviewing what they may have learned for next time. Grose asserts that we must avoid solving all their problems for them.
Parents can promote a lasting sense of resilience in your sons and daughters by:
- Having a positive attitude yourself. Your attitude as a parent impacts on their ability to bounce back from some of the difficulties they face. Make sure you model a ‘you can do it’ attitude for your child when s/he meets some of life’s curve balls.
- Look for teachable moments. Many childrens’ learning opportunities are disguised as problems. Make the most of these opportunities so that they can grow and learn from some of the challenges they face.
- Make children active participants in the family. Active participation in a family develops the self-help, problem-solving and independence skills that are necessary for resilience.
- Build their coping skills. There are plenty of strategies you can pass on to children to help them cope when life doesn’t go their way, including acceptance, getting away for a while, and normalisation.
Promoting resilience in our children is a not a single event but a continuous process that requires adults to be supportive and empathetic when things don’t go their way. It also requires you as a parent to have an understanding of resilience, so you have faith in your child’s ability to cope.
We acknowledge that students must learn to manage their disappointment. Angela Mollard (2013) contends that it is parents’ instinct to steer their children away from disappointment and failure. Yet to do so denies them the precious gift of resilience. Resilience is defined as tenacity, grit, perseverance, the ability to bounce back – and I believe that we need to develop this quality in our young people in preparation for dealing with other challenges and disappointments they may face in adult life.
Mrs Kim Kiepe
Principal