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Building Children's Resilence

Build Children's Resilience

For the longest time, people talked about resilience as something you either have or don’t have. While resiliency may come easier to others, there are ways to foster and create more resiliency. We may not be able to predict exactly how someone will be impacted by trauma, but we are able to help prepare ourselves and the people we care for in some ways.
The National Training and Development Curriculum goes in depth into ways to build children’s resiliency. Here is a link to go through some trainings on your own. https://ntdcportal.org/general-curriculum-materials/right-time/#toggle-id-2
Here are some practical ways to build resiliency for the children you are caring for:
Create Routines- having a predictable environment is so helpful in creating stability and trust.
Make Sure Physiological Needs Are Met- Make sure you are creating a plan around physiological needs such as HALT- Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. If these needs are not met, it is really hard to move forward with any routine. Know your kiddo and what they need and make a plan.
Think about specific needs related to past experiences. If your child has had specific adverse experiences, take some time to think about how their needs could have been impacted and plan around it. For example, if a child was abandoned by a parent be aware of separation anxiety and ways to help ease that. Let them know you will be back in “x “ amount of minutes so they can learn to trust you wont leave.
Coping Mechanisms – you have the opportunity to utilize coping mechanisms and create healthy ones for the children you care for. Modeling ways to cope is huge. Regularly talk about coping and give examples such as breathing exercises, outdoor activities, and journaling. This can be amazing for both you and your children.
There are many more wonderful ideas on building childhood resiliency if you visit the above link. While many of the kinship children you are caring for have been through the unimaginable, there is hope for their future and their resiliency.

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