Fostering Resilience and Wellbeing

Prepare your daughter for the road, not the road for your daughter.

Many of you will have heard me speak at the last Year 8 graduation dinner where I told parents, “I want to wrap every student up in cotton wool, with little washing instructions for their next school”. The idea comes from the recognition that every girl is unique and that what suits one girl may not suit another. As I consider the diverse needs of our girls, I am increasingly convinced of the pressing importance to cultivate resilience in them by nurturing mindsets and abilities ready to navigate the inevitable uncertainties in an ever-changing world.

After the prolonged period of remote learning during the pandemic, our girls emerged from their cocoons with some apparent nervousness intermingled with excitement, aware of the significance of reconnecting and engaging socially once more. Coupled with the complexities of adolescence, it is crucial to recognise the lingering social impact these years have had on our girls and the measures we need to take to support and help shape and reshape their development.

Resisting the urge to eliminate every obstacle from your child’s path can be challenging for most parents. After all, we have their best interest and intentions at heart. When we clear the road for them, life can become effortless, yet we are depriving them of the vital life-coping skills needed to navigate hardships and realities.

To help our girls foster independence, I have found that walking alongside the girls is effective and empowering, which allows them to learn to navigate the path rather than being shown the way. But how do we strike the delicate balance? How do we offer the right amount of support?

It is not an easy fix. After all, each child is different. Here are some tips that can be helpful:

1. Be calm. If we are calm as the adult, it helps the girls calm down too. Take a moment to breathe, maybe get a cold drink and slow down a little. It’s much easier to talk to your daughter when you are both calm.

2. Provide perspective. Help your daughter assess the significance of the situation, learning to distinguish between minor issues and major catastrophes. Utilise scaling 1–10 as a measure of the severity or importance.

3. Switch roles. Get your daughter involved in coming up with solutions. Guide her in the process of understanding the situation and circumstances, and involve her in solving the problem. A common instance of this at school is when the girls forget something at home. If it’s their PE gear, engage in a learning conversation to help them remember the next time. However, if they’ve forgotten their speech board on exam day, this may warrant a call home.

4. Promote preparedness. Encourage your daughter to think ahead to cultivate organisation skills. Support her in taking ownership of her daily preparation. For younger girls, this might include writing a checklist of things to remember to do before going to school such as packing their bags with PE gear or library books, and as they get older, allowing them to independently check their class page and sports page on the OLE.

5. Embrace setbacks. It’s important to help your daughter cope with disappointment, as it is a natural part of life’s journey.

6. Share your experiences. Students need to see that we have failed too. I hold up my much-loved and worn pointe shoes that I was wearing when I failed my pre-elementary ballet exam. Aspiring to be a dancer, this was truly earth-shattering. The girls can understand better knowing that those of us who present as successful role models have learned from failures and mistakes. I once worked with a wise colleague who told a mother, “Perhaps the most useful thing you could do for your child is help them cope with the disappointment”. Instead of arguing with the teaching staff about missed opportunities like not being selected for a sports team, redirect your focus and support your child in handling feelings of disappointment. This approach is kinder and more beneficial in the long run. It enables them to then cope with the exam results that may not meet their expectations, or the missed summer job opportunities. By supporting your child through these seemingly small disappointments, which are very big and real at the time, you contribute to the development of a resilient young adult.

7. Utilise existing resources and support. At school, we build on the Mitey mental health toolkit to help our girls develop strategies when dealing with relational pressures and their role in society, fostering resilience and wellbeing. Find out more from your daughter’s teacher or have a dialogue with your daughter on how she can further hone those skills, encouraging her to use the knowledge she has acquired when needed. In our partnership with parents, we strive to prepare the girls for the road by nurturing a balance of care and love with expectations for excellence and a deep sense of responsibility. In their backpack, we equip them with God’s love, school values, self-belief, positive experiences, and resilience. While we may be tempted to clear every obstacle from their path for convenience or instant gratification, we should remind ourselves that by doing so, we hinder their ability to think for themselves and develop problem-solving skills to navigate life’s realities. Our focus as educators and parents should be to empower our girls, who are brimming with potential, to confidently carve their unique path in life.

Fides Servanda Est.

Ms Juliet Small Girls’ School Principal