Building A Resilient Family

Our goal as parents is to raise resilient children- as the saying goes, providing our children a solid pair of hiking boots, instead of trying to pave the road every step of the way. At home, that starts with getting ourselves on solid ground. In today's session we will address how our children can benefit when we make the time for self-care. We can also work on our own awareness, responsiveness and wisdom through the practice of mindfulness. From this solid starting place, we more effectively make choices that lead towards a more resilient family life and structure.

Raising a family is undoubtedly an uncertain and constantly changing situation. On Day 2 we will explore how we often get caught in perfectionism, fixing and doing all the time, and as a result, leading us to lose track of our own values and strengths. By settling and building awareness, we bring our best self to more situations more often, and better recognize when we’ve been involved in a moment that needs “repairing” afterwards. Through aiming to see life as it really is, and raising children with clarity and objectivity, we can let go of the extra pressures that unnecessarily complicate family life.

Resilience in children starts with something most of us value already – consistent relationships. But life can get busy and cuts into our quality time, while, our attention can be pulled away even when we are with our kids. In today's session, we will place emphasis on learning how we can use mindfulness to practice focused awareness with our children and on a different scale, bringing awareness to how we prioritize our family time throughout the years.

A second aspect of resilience for both kids and adults is a belief in our own self-efficacy, the ability to affect change in our lives. In today's session we will explore how this perspective requires an active push back against the ‘negativity bias,’ the tendency for difficult and challenging thoughts to feel mentally sticky and push aside awareness of what’s going well. We may also quite easily get caught up in attachment of how life ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be. Seeing our children exactly how they are right now, can allow us to seek the necessary opportunities to build resilience, through an emphasis on the value of recognizing their own strengths.

In today's session we will be discussing another core aspect of resilience; a set of self- management skills called executive function, which act as our ‘brain manager’. This developmental path explains much of how children sustain healthy routines and learn in school, and how parents can implement effective behavioral plans. This is another opportunity to meet children exactly where they are developmentally, providing supports, building skills, and letting go of anything extra we’re adding to our lives.

In the modern world, it’s impossible to discuss family well-being and resilience without mentioning technology. Unlike past cultural changes, hundreds of studies document the impact of under-managed screen time. In today's discussion we will discuss how kids, by definition, lack mature self-management skills and require adult guidance to create a balanced, healthy relationship with their devices. The key focus of this lesson is therefore to build nonjudgmental awareness, meaning to note our habits and assumptions, before making skillful choices around this challenging part of modern family life.

Motivation alone is not how we overcome challenges; we also need specific skills to navigate our lives. In today's lesson we will learn how to develop and harness Emotional Intelligence. Emotional intelligence starts with awareness; noting our emotions as they come and go, and also recognizing how our emotions affect us. Developing a nuanced emotional vocabulary, while also teaching children how to manage their behavior around their emotions, contributes to resilience through an increased capacity to manage our complex emotional lives.

Today's session focuses on the importance and vast benefits of teaching mindfulness to our children. In many ways, the aim of mindfulness in and of itself is to build resilience. With children, our own practice goes a long way towards teaching them mindfulness. But we can also look for opportunities to teach mindfulness, through activities we choose, and of course, introducing meditation practices to our children.

One foundational teaching of mindfulness is this: Don’t believe anything you hear, go out and prove to yourself that it works. Whatever we believe, however we were raised, this depth of mindfulness practice means settling, observing with clarity, and then making choices to live our lives as skillfully as we’re able. Today we unpack the sheer importance of recognizing typical child development, building from strengths, while also supporting children who fall behind, to ease our family towards long term wellbeing.

Letting go of perfectionism and recognizing we can’t predict and protect our children from everything is key to enabling us to reassure ourselves that what we are doing is not insufficient. This is a vital lesson that today, we will discuss, and use to understand how to consciously work to build a resilient family. The path to resilience in many ways represents the modern science of back to the basics parenting. Cultivating relationships, focusing on the value of effort and personal strengths of our children, and building self-management skills are all key to our own happiness, as well as our to our family unit. Family life is changing and imperfect, and that’s perfect – cover the basics, let go of the rest, and focus on exactly what you think is best for you and your family.