It has been a great privilege to meet with many families over recent weeks to conduct Information Sessions, Tours and Interviews. A common statement that is shared during my various conversations is 'All we want is for our child/ren to be happy'. I suspect this comment resonates with many families across our community. As parents our job is to love, care and nurture our children. Of course, we want the best for them. We naturally try to protect them from difficulties and do all we can to make our children feel good or happy. While happiness is no doubt a worthy and admirable goal, should we be aspiring for more?
As we know, life is full of adversity and disappointment. We know first-hand how much our lives have been disrupted over the past two years. Life for some over this time has been far from happy. Teaching our children to bounce back when life doesn’t go to plan is key to coping with difficulties. Rather than simply creating happiness, there is great potential benefit in allowing our children to experience challenges in order for them to develop resilience.
One of the many difficulties as a parent is to find opportunities to allow our children to fail safely. Allowing children to face challenges and openly discuss their disappointments in order to assist them in developing healthy coping strategies and to build resilience.
When schools and home partner to intentionally nurture and model resilience, we shape and develop young minds with the necessary skills needed to navigate life well in the future. Now that’s a powerful goal.
