For parents, the teenage years often represent one last chance to teach certain values and lessons to your child. In reality, this is an oversimplification (there are countless opportunities for this both before and after your child’s teenage years). However, these years do represent a fantastic opportunity to start building resilience in teens. 

Resilience is a skill that will allow your teens to overcome challenges, cope with setbacks, and persevere when success does not feel like a foregone conclusion. When your teen has access to this tool and can use it effectively, they’ll become more adept at handling the ups and downs of everyday life. That makes resilience a powerful skill–and one that can serve your teens well throughout the rest of their lives.

As a result, building resilience in teens becomes a priority for many parents.

Resilience is a Key Life Skill

For mental health experts, resilience is typically defined by how one responds to a crisis. It’s your ability to weather a setback or emergency and quickly bounce back to your pre-crisis state. For those without resilience, challenges and setbacks can become cumulative–with one setback making another more likely. Resilience makes this less likely. Individuals who demonstrate resilience are more likely to experience setbacks and challenges as events that are isolated.

It’s worth mentioning that marginalized populations, such as transgender individuals or BIPOC communities, experience far less build-in, institutional resilience. This can have a dramatic impact on just how often people in those communities must draw on their own personal resilience to weather or bounce back after setbacks.

Resilience is a key skill for everyone, however. Setbacks and failures will occur in everyone’s life, so the ability to handle those challenges is critical to your long term wellness. There are some specific (and healthy) ways that parents can assist in building resilience in teens.

Tips for Building Resilience in Teens

Unfortunately, some parents think they are helping by creating roadblocks or challenges for their teen. There’s no evidence that this helps build resilience. Instead, helping your teen build these tools and skills in a caring and empathetic way is typically more effective. Providing your teen with these tools is not the same thing as “toughening them up,” and the latter should generally be avoided.

Here are healthy ways for parents to help your teen develop resilience:

• Help your teen understand that bad things happen–but that one bad thing doesn’t mean everything is bad. This is something you can do through continuing conversations, both while your teen is experiencing a setback and between setbacks.

• Tell your teen about instances where you have experienced similar setbacks and tell them how you coped with the events. 

• Make time for things your teen enjoys. When your teen is having a bad day, you have a wonderful opportunity to deploy some joyful tools (and even build some bonds in the process).

• Help your teen learn to accept uncertainty. They probably won’t like it–and they may even fight against it. But getting a little more comfortable with uncertainty can help build resilience in your teen.

• Encourage your teen to practice self-soothing and self-care in healthy ways. 

• Stay empathetic and non-judgmental. The last thing your teen needs is to have their feelings trivialized or made fun of.

• Reassure your teen that you’ll figure things out together and that they aren’t in this alone.

You can also develop your own tools and strategies for helping build resilience in your teens. In general, parents are encouraged to remember the 7 C’s Model of Resilience:

• Confidence

• Competence

• Connection

• Character

• Contribution

• Coping

• Control

How Parents Can Model Resilience

Teens can be incredibly observant. Which means they’ll be looking to you as a model for how to build their resilience. Parents, then, have an opportunity to model healthy ways to handle setbacks and cope with failures. This can include behaviors such as:

• Deploying your own healthy coping mechanisms when you encounter setbacks. (And don’t be shy about telling your teen about which coping mechanisms you’re using, how, and why.)

• Prioritizing your health. Make good decisions about getting enough sleep, eating well, and getting some exercise. You can then explain how this leaves you in a better place to be resilient.

• Creating some structure. That structure can help provide some reassurance and routine when setbacks of failures occur.

Modeling this kind of healthy behavior can give your teen a nice roadmap they’ll be able to reference for years to come.

What to Do When Setbacks Occur

Setbacks and failures will, of course, occur. Resilience does not make you impervious to these things. And it certainly doesn’t mean you won’t feel the emotions involved. When setbacks do occur, it’s helpful to slow the process down and be intentional about how you respond.

Helping your teen practice resilience can make that process easier and give your teen an important ability–bouncing back from a crisis. 

If you have questions about resilience or how resilience can impact your teen’s health, talk to their pediatrician during their next checkup. Contact our Chicago or Northbrook offices to make an appointment today.