Live from Home Visiting Conference: Raising Resilient Kids

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: [00:00:00] Welcome back to The Parenting Brief. I’m your host, Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez. This week the parenting brief is recording at the Strong Families AZ Home Visiting Conference where home visitor professionals are meeting to learn how to offer better support to families in Arizona. Right now I’m sitting with Dr. Tovah Klein, an expert on toddler development. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. You’ve been talking about how parents can build resilience in children. Can you tell me a little bit about what it means to be resilient? 

Dr. Tovah Klein: Yeah. It’s such an important question to, so to be resilient means being able to handle adversities challenges big or little.

And what I see that as is developing the ability to adapt. To adjust, to be flexible, particularly when things don’t go your way, or very surprising or even shocking, like in crises. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Is building resilience in [00:01:00] children a skill that needs to be taught, or how do they really learn that resiliency? 

Dr. Tovah Klein: Yeah, so it develops within the relationship between the parent or the main caregivers and the child.

And particularly for young children. So that comes from having a base of someone they trust who can kind of buffer them from the bigger stressors and help them through the everyday challenges. You know, you cut my sandwich wrong, or it’s hard to get out the door in the morning. So it builds over time as parents help children handle these really intense emotions, particularly the negative ones.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: How can learning those skills impact their life as they grow? Why is it so important to learn that? 

Dr. Tovah Klein: Yeah, it’s really important because life is not, you know, let’s say a cakewalk, right? Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don’t. And what we want is children who can handle the challenges, handle when a friend won’t [00:02:00] play, you know, handle when they’re really sad saying goodbye, but also handle.

When say there’s a fire and the family has to flee and they’re safe physically, but then being able to eventually. Get through that hardship and adjust and be okay again. Because if you don’t have some of what we call resilience, how do you get back to, I’m still okay when the bad stuff happens. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: It’s that being okay again, not necessarily protecting from the bad things ever happening, 

Dr. Tovah Klein: right?

Because here, here’s what we know in life. Bad things happen. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Yeah. It’s an unfortunate thing. 

Dr. Tovah Klein: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of like facing reality. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Yeah. I know you’ve done a lot with parents over the years. Is there a story that you could share or you have seen this skill in action? 

Dr. Tovah Klein: Great question. Um, yeah, I feel like I see it.

Um. All the time. But let, let me think of a story of a young child. [00:03:00] Um, you’ll have to read my book. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Yes, exactly. 

Dr. Tovah Klein: But yeah, I mean, when I, I see it often. I’m thinking of, um, a child who was about four at the time, whose mom ended up hospitalized, pregnant, hospitalized. Suddenly, right. So comes home, mommy’s not there, can’t talk to her initially.

Um, so it was melting down sleep regression, real challenge to the family. And they started like this routine around singing songs about mommy. And you know, took out pictures and made little stories about mommy. It was a couple days she was in the ICU and then they were able to speak to her and then, you know, video and then eventually visit and it was like a balloon being deflated and then reflated.

Right. And then when mom became home, there was a little celebration, you know, no, not over the top. And he just went back to his routines ’cause the family kept the [00:04:00] routines. And it took him a few days, you know, clingy. Yeah. And then remember her saying to me, you know, did he even care that I was gone? I said, he cared that you were gone.

He cared a lot, but he feels safe. Again. It’s that idea of how do we help children get through the hard feel, the hard, and return to a feeling of safety? I’m okay. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing that beautiful story. Um, and thank you for following along with us this week. We’ll be back again tomorrow with more expert conversation.