HOPE: The Essential Skill to Build Resilience in Children
With the pandemic, climate change, gun violence, teacher burn-out, and education funding issues, children and adolescents are experiencing an unprecedented amount of stress and uncertainty about the world and society we live in. Feeling a lack of agency and hopelessness can slowly impact even the most balanced child if we don’t pay close attention to our children.
Hope is an attitude or outlook that good things will happen and one’s wishes or aims will ultimately be fulfilled (Preston, 2021).
Hopeful thinking includes three elements:
- Goals – Approaching life in a goal-oriented way.
- Pathways – Finding different ways to achieve your goals.
- Agency – Believing that you can instigate change and achieve these goals
During these times, you can reduce the chances of this happening by doing a few things with and for your child:
- Encourage your child to pursue their goal.
- Teach your child how to brainstorm with this (FREE) worksheet.
- Develop positive mantras. You can turn this into a fun art project by making a digital or physical collage.
- Discuss what types of challenges they may encounter and reassure your child they are to be expected. Recall past successes and difficulties that were overcome.
- Reflect on past accomplishments and highlight how they overcame certain roadblocks.
- Be sure you are taking care of your own wellbeing.
The mission of Little Sage Yoga is to foster human strengths in children and adolescents through the arts, performance/yoga, and more. Check out our upcoming Hope, Art + Yoga workshop and other workshops coming soon.