Putting the relationship first - growing resilience

When we have a child in our midst who struggles with separation, or with the busyness or people-ness of our settings, or some other sensory element, there are two lenses we can choose, or routes we can take, and what we choose hugely impacts how we respond to that child, and what they experience. (Note the word ‘choose’ here, because honestly, WE get to decide).

If, as so many places and adults do, we go the ‘resilience route’, we are going to respond in ways that ask the child to “cope”, to “deal with it”, to “manage” (and even with a backup phrase such as, “like the others do”). (Eek).

If, instead, we choose the ‘emotional safety’ route, we come at the situation differently. Softly. Warmly. We put the relationship first. We look at connection and problem-solving out of kindness, rather than expecting the child to solve problems on their own, especially when this is usually nowhere near a fair expectation). 

Is this to say that resilience is not something we want to develop in our children? Of course not. But with young children, the way to resilience is not a ‘throw them in the deep end’ scenario. It comes with partnership, time, co-regulation and the child’s deep knowledge that they are cared about, and cared for. You could say (and in fact, we definitely are), that the ‘resilience route’ as a first call is not likely to lead to a sense of emotional safety, but putting emotional safety at the fore DOES lead, in its own good time, to resilience. (That equation does add up). When we’ve chosen this way, our children do not learn to cope and bounce back because they’ve been ‘left to it’, but because they’ve been loved to it!