By Mrs Julie Collins, Assistant Principal Pastoral and Wellbeing

Resilience

I have written often about resilience and the importance of teaching your children how to build resilience. The most effective way of teaching resilience is letting them make mistakes.

If you jump in and rescue your child every time they make a mistake or forget something, you are robbing them of the opportunity to grow. They need little setbacks regularly so they can cope with bigger problems later in life. This will also allow them to develop their independence, something they are going to need to survive in the game of life!

If your child forgets their lunch, let them build systems to learn to cope, they won’t go hungry, they will either miss a meal or find a way to get some food.

If they forget their sports gear or their permission note that was to be handed in, they may miss out and they will learn to put a process in place that will help them remember next time.

As hard as it is for a parent to let their child make mistakes and teachers to let a student fail, it is the most important lesson in building resilience which creates opportunities for growth.

The attached Open Parachute information sheet on resilience, may help those of you with younger children or those who need some practice in allowing your children to grow in to wonderful independent members of society.