Jenny Billingham

This week we conclude our look at some of the fundamentals of a healthy childhood as detailed by Victoria Prooday in her article, The Silent Tragedy Affecting Today’s Children*.

Last week, we started to look at some of the things that we as parents might do to minimize the risk of our children developing mental health issues. Victoria Prooday’s article The Silent Tragedy Affecting Today’s Children* lists what she believes to be the fundamentals of a healthy childhood and these include...

One of the most significant things we can do for our child is to ‘be there’, care for and be emotionally attentive to him/her. How easy is it for a parent to be distracted when children clamour for attention? Our minds tend to be busy, and often we’re thinking about what happened yesterday, or worrying about how we’re going to do something tomorrow.

All of us, regardless of age, gender or social status hurt other people, either accidently or intentionally. We all make mistakes. Even though apologising is such a powerful social skill, we give precious little thought to teaching our children how to apologize. Many of us never learned very well ourselves. How do we go about offering a sincere apology when we have wronged somebody?

We are all relational beings and do need one another. We have been created that way. Encouraging children to develop strong relationships with both adults and children fosters the development of support networks and resilience. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, close family friends can help fulfil this role.   

We all have an innate capacity for overcoming adversity and as we deal with everyday issues, we draw upon this capacity. When a major life struggle occurs, we draw upon it in a much bigger way. Life may never be the same, but as we adapt to the loss we construct a “new” normal which may include a new way of looking at ourselves, at our lives and at the world.

All of us need to be able to communicate with other people. We need to be able to both start and end conversations. When we’re speaking with others, one of the most valuable things we can contribute is to listen actively.

A good question that we might ask ourselves and reflect on is something like, “What positive characteristics and strengths have developed in me that might not have developed if I’d had an easier life journey?”

The most important factor in developing resilience in children is family resilience. Family resilience is the ability of the family as a whole to withstand and rebound from adversity. It’s an ability to return to previous levels of functioning following a crisis or challenge.*

Resilience is shaped by a number of factors including a person’s personality and temperament as well as the environment in which they grow up (family and community). This week, I’ll look at a few things we can do as parents.