Making children strong: 6 helpful tips for parents

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Parents like to see their children as courageous, friendly and solution-orientated people, but not every child is born with these characteristics. What can parents do? Fabian Grolimund gives 6 specific tips. A first insight:

• Children will encounter problems again and again in the course of their lives. Let your child solve the problem themselves or offer advice. This will help them develop healthy self-confidence.
• Encourage your child to keep going after a failure. Research shows that children can cope well with failure if they believe that they can improve through effort. On the other hand, they give up quickly if they have the impression that an achievement depends on intelligence or talent.
• Failures are part of life, so celebrate a good grade in the maths exam with your child. And if they come home with a bad grade, give them comfort. Go straight to tip 3 here.

Read Fabian Grolimund's detailed tips in the full article.

Tip 1: Use problems to strengthen your child

Children encounter problems again and again in the course of their lives. As parents, we often feel pressurised into providing an immediate solution for our child. In doing so, we overlook the fact that every problem is also an opportunity for the child to grow and develop important problem-solving skills.
By helping only as much as necessary and involving the child more and more in the development of a solution, we guide them to solve problems themselves. A child who is confident in their abilities and problem-solving skills and can deal with setbacks and failures is also confident when faced with challenges.
It is important that children develop healthy self-confidence. However, the more self-confident they are, the better. A positive but realistic image of themselves is helpful. So that we can develop, face appropriate challenges and be happy about small steps forward. We also need to be able to recognise our weaknesses and difficulties and assess ourselves correctly. To do this, children need benevolent but accurate feedback. (See also the video «Solving problems».)

Tip 2: Show your child that efforts pay off

How does your child react when they experience failure? Does it give up straight away or does it keep practising?
Children also learn indirectly from you as a parent or teacher whether it is worth continuing to try despite failures. Psychologists Perry and Penner have shown how effective even brief contact with a positive model can be. They showed psychology students a video of a psychology professor. The professor talked about his student days and described an incident in which he had to endure repeated failures and only didn't give up because of good persuasion from a friend. He then successfully graduated from university. He emphasised that performance depends above all on personal effort and that skills can be trained through practice. The students who had seen the video performed better at the end of the semester.
Research shows that children can cope well with failure if they believe that they can improve through effort. However, they quickly give up if they have the impression that performance depends on intelligence or talent. Children need parents who teach them: You can improve through practice; I see (even small!) progress and am happy about it.

Tip 3: Catch your child when they have to accept failure

How would you feel and how would you react if you had to hear week after week in your job, despite your full commitment: «You're not good enough! Your performance is not good enough!»?
Many children experience this every day - for years. How can we as parents or teachers empower children in this situation? Perhaps the following dialogue between the mother of a child with poor arithmetic skills and myself will give you a clue:
G.: «How do you manage to get your daughter to keep engaging in maths even though she is constantly experiencing failure?»
Mum: «You know, I expect my daughter to practise with me for 10 minutes a day. I'm adamant about that. But I've learnt to be happy with her when she makes small progress. When she comes home with an exam and has achieved a 4, we go out for a winner's ice cream together.»
G.: «And what if she comes home with an unsatisfactory grade?"
Mum: "Then we'll go out for a consolation ice cream! I want her to know that if it went well, we'll be happy for you. If it went badly, we'll catch you.»

Tip 4: Enjoy moments for two

When children mature into adolescents, they develop different needs. They still want to be taken seriously by their parents. They expect to be allowed to express their own opinions in conversations. They seek debate, but also understanding and security.
Conversations become more challenging for parents.
There is a simple way to create more closeness again: Make sure you spend time alone with your child. Many of the issues that preoccupy teenagers cannot be discussed at the family dinner table.
Instead of going on a trip with the four of you, mum could do something with her son, dad with his daughter. Maybe even a short separate holiday? A city trip for two?
Parents are regularly amazed at how much better they get to know their children and how much closeness is suddenly restored when they consciously take time for a child: just the two of them and without a to-do list in their heads.
At the same time, our self-esteem grows when we are able to stand up for our values and ideals and contribute to something that is bigger than ourselves. This happens when children experience this:
- Because of me and my contribution, my family, my class, maybe even the world will be a little better.
- Others can count on me and find support from me.
Viktor Frankl writes in his book «The Suffering of a Meaningless Life»: «In service to a cause or in love for a person, man fulfils himself. The more he is absorbed in his task, the more he is devoted to his partner, the more he is human, the more he becomes himself. He can only realise himself to the extent that he forgets himself, that he overlooks himself.»
In our culture, the focus is on the success of the individual. It's about being better, winning, setting yourself apart, outdoing others and excelling. This culture spurs us on to give our best. But it also has its downsides: Stress, burnout, envy and feelings of failure and worthlessness if we don't manage to stay ahead.
Viktor Frankl's advice shows us a way out: We can achieve happiness and realise ourselves if we focus on something other than ourselves. We can make time for our children, engage with our partner.

Ask your child for their advice or opinion on a matter!

Tip 5: Give your child the opportunity to get involved

People who are committed to helping others, the environment or a good cause on their own initiative find their lives more meaningful and have a higher sense of self-worth.
Parents can encourage their children to get involved and take responsibility by doing something good themselves, being generous and grateful. We can show our children that there is more to life than performance, competition, winning and losing.
Just as we can boost a child's self-esteem by having them participate in a good cause, we can also empower all children: If we organise a 3-kilometre run, some children can boost their self-confidence. They can show how sporty they are. On the other hand, there will be losers. The overweight child who finishes last will feel ashamed and be confirmed in being unathletic. In a sponsored run, on the other hand, every lap counts for a good cause and every child can be happy at the end of the run to have done a good deed for others.
Our self-confidence always has to do with where we stand in comparison to others. If we make our happiness dependent on this, we are on shaky ground.
If we focus a little more on others than on ourselves, our self-esteem grows. We can see from other people's faces that our contribution is appreciated. We see a good thing grow, are happy about it and feel that our lives are valuable and meaningful. At the same time, our view widens. We are no longer so focussed on ourselves and think less about how others see us, how we appear and how important we are. (See also the video «Making a contribution»).

Make sure that you also spend time alone with your child.

Tip 6: Show your child the value of good deeds

The relatively new research field of positive psychology is concerned with the question of how people can achieve well-being. Prof Martin Seligmann, founder of this field of research, comes to the conclusion «that a kind action does more to increase one's well-being than any other exercise we have tested».

In his book «Flourish», Seligmann describes the following experience:
«Once again the postage has gone up by a cent!» I was furious because I had been standing in an endlessly winding queue for three quarters of an hour to get a sheet of one hundred one-cent stamps. The queue was moving at a snail's pace and the people around me were getting more and more agitated. When I finally got to the counter, I asked for ten sheets of 100 stamps. All together for 10 dollars.
«Who needs one cent stamps?» I shouted. «I'll give them to you for free!» A storm of applause broke out and people gathered round me as I handed out this treasure. Within two minutes, the whole queue had dispersed and people had disappeared with most of my stamps. It was one of the most satisfying moments of my life.

Children can cope well with failure if they believe they can improve through effort.

Think together with your child about who they could be friendly to. The following questions can help you with this:
- When was the last time you made someone happy? How did you do it? How did you feel afterwards?
- How can you make other people happy (visit someone, help someone, share something, give a compliment, give a gift, invite a child standing on the sidelines to play, etc.)?
- Which of these would you like to do now?
Afterwards, talk to your child about how they felt.

Show your child that you stand by them - even if they fail.

A strong child can say of itself:

I can:

• mich über Erfolge freuen
• aus Misserfolgen und Fehlern lernen
• mich durch Anstrengung und Übung verbessern
• Probleme lösen und Schwierigkeiten überwinden
• mit anderen sprechen, wenn mich Sorgen quälen
• mir Hilfe und Unterstützung holen, wenn ich sie benötige

Ich bin:

• als Mensch liebenswert
• verantwortlich für das, was ich tue
• zuversichtlich, dass ich mit Problemen und schwierigen Gefühlen umgehen kann
• mir bewusst, dass mein Wert als Mensch nicht von meinen Leistungen abhängt

Ich habe:

• Eltern, die mir zuhören und sich Zeit für mich nehmen
• Menschen in meinem Leben, die mich so annehmen und lieben, wie ich bin
• Menschen, die mir helfen, wenn ich Hilfe brauche, und mich gleichzeitig darin bestärken, selbstbestimmt zu handeln
• Werte, die mir wichtig sind und für die ich mich einsetzen kann

Read more about resilience:

• What makes children strong?

• How can parents help in everyday life?
• How does resilience develop? Why does nothing seem to knock some people down? Our main article on the topic of resilience
• We spoke to resilience experts Fabian Grolimund and Stefanie Rietzler for an hour and also fielded questions from our readers - the live recording of our event in Zurich