Resilience for Your 1-Year-Old

Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship; growing resilience provides a perfect opportunity.

Resilience is the ability to overcome challenges and adversities. You can often see resilience when people can thrive despite many challenges. A loving and consistent relationship with a trusted adult builds resilience in children.¹ Other ways to build children’s strength to handle challenges is to help them identify their strengths and to form a strong sense of identity, including pride in their cultural or racial heritage.

No matter how many positive, supportive influences a child has in their life, too much adversity can have long-term negative effects on development. Reducing serious adversities in children’s lives is the best way to keep them healthy.²

Throughout the early years, children face developmentally appropriate challenges and learn whether or not an adult can be trusted to be there for them when needed. For example, when a one-year-old cries, seeing that one of their important adults is there—paying attention and assuring them that everything is okay—gives the child a sense that it is okay to approach a challenge.

We all face challenges to being resilient. As your child is developing, it is essential that they can turn to you to figure out when a challenge is the right size for them and how to overcome feeling scared, hurt, or excluded. Resilience means being willing to face a right-sized challenge, even if a challenging experience in the past was difficult to overcome.

The steps below include specific, practical strategies to prepare you to build resilience and a relationship with your child that includes reliable, unconditional support and love.

Why Resilience?

Your child’s openness to engage in manageable challenges and recover from difficult experiences is essential to developing lifelong resilience. You can begin by exposing your child to challenges that are just the right size for them, offering just enough support to know they can trust you, and helping them recognize and feel a sense of success and empowerment when they master the experience.

Today, in the short term, resilience can create

• opportunities for your child to have new experiences
• a sense of confidence that your child can manage a certain level of difficulty
• a strong connection between you as you navigate these challenges together and triumph in success

Tomorrow, in the long term, helping your child develop resilience

• develops a sense of safety, security, and a belief in self
• provides a firm foundation for exploration, learning, and speaking up
• prepares your child for handling inevitable unexpected challenges in life
• builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making
• deepens family trust and intimacy

Five Steps for Growing Resilience

This five-step process helps you and your child grow resilience together. It also builds essential critical life skills in your child. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).

One-year-olds may communicate with you by babbling, single words, and crying. Despite your child’s emerging ability to use words, continue to pay close attention to their facial expressions, movements, and sounds to work on understanding what they are trying to communicate. Your efforts to learn from your child build trust and create empathetic interactions that let them know you are interested in their thoughts.

Understanding what your child thinks and feels will make a big difference in setting the stage for resilience. Your child will give you many cues about whether a challenge feels too big or too small for them. Every child is different, and your child may change from day to day in terms of how willing they are to take on challenges and to be resilient when those experiences become difficult.

You are the person who will know your child’s cues better than anyone else, and you will be able to anticipate if talking to someone new, trying a new food, having a new childcare provider, or another experience is right for today. Is your child feeling particularly tired? Did they just get hurt, or are they hungry? Knowing how they are doing and what their facial expressions and body language mean will help you decide if a challenge is the right size for your child right now.

In paying attention and noting minor differences in your child’s cries, body language, and speaking, you

• show them that they can trust you to notice how they feel
• let them know that you will help them to face challenges
• will help them advocate for themselves if something feels like too much for right now or if they need more support
• tell them that they can trust you to help them gain a sense of what experiences are right for risk-taking and which ones are not
• deepen your ability to communicate with one another

Actions

• Help your child notice their cues to develop self-awareness and learn to trust their feelings. This includes describing and naming the pride they may feel when they have gotten through a challenging situation. Pointing out their resilience will help them notice it and know it is there when the next challenge arises.
• Each time your child expresses any big feeling, be sure to name it: “You seem angry” or “You seem happy.” This builds their feelings vocabulary, adding to their self-awareness and ability to manage their feelings. As you react to your child, you will find they feel a greater sense of your understanding and responsiveness, so your interactions become more two-way instead of one-way.
• When reading books, look at the images of children or animals and guess the feelings. You could say, “I think the little bear is happy to see his friends. He has a smile on his face.”
• If your child is unsure about how others are feeling — or buried in their feelings — help them by sharing what you think others are feeling. You could say: “I wonder if she feels happy because her friend shared the toys. Do you think she feels happy?” Or, “I think that person might be feeling angry because their face is red and their eyebrows are scrunched up. Do you think they feel angry?”
• Practicing naming feelings will enable your child to identify their feelings and others and seek support when needed.

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, there is much to learn about understanding your child’s rhythms, temperaments, and needs. Because of all this learning, you will make mistakes and even poor choices. How you handle those moments can determine how you help build your child’s resilience. Offering yourself the grace and permission to not be perfect can ease your anxiety in responding to your child’s needs. Learning about developmental milestones can help you better understand what your child is going through.³

• 12-18-month-olds will respond to their name and may use 5 to 10 words. They are starting to combine words with gestures, follow simple directions, and remember recent events and actions. They may feel uneasy when separated from their loved ones.
• 18-24-month-olds can understand ten times more than they can speak, are starting to respond to questions, point to familiar objects and people in pictures, and follow two-step directions. They are also beginning to want to try things on their own.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.

Actions

• Use your tone of voice and facial expression to help your child celebrate when they have gotten through a change, such as a new childcare arrangement, sleeping in a new place, trying a new food, and so on.
• Model resilience while interacting with your child. Modeling resilience can be one of the greatest teaching tools.
  • Share the focus. As you spend time with your child, follow their lead. As they pick up new toys or explore a different part of the room, notice and name what they are exploring.⁴
  • Notice gestures and listen for thoughts and feelings. Attempt to figure out what your child is trying to tell you through their sounds, gestures, and facial expressions. When they express a feeling on their face or through their body, name it. “I noticed your face is red, and your mouth is frowning. You look angry.”
  • Children require your attention to thrive. So, why not build a special time into your routine when you are fully present to listen to what your child has to tell you? Turn off your phone. Set a timer if needed. Then, notice your body language. Ask yourself, “What is my body communicating, and how am I demonstrating that I’m listening?”
• Read and “pretend play” together.
  • During reading time, select a book of faces to help your child learn to identify the different feelings of other children. Point out what you notice and how you can tell what each child is feeling. Be sure to point out moments when children successfully overcome difficulties.
  • After reading a story together, act out what feelings look like together. “First, she looked sad (make a sad face), and then she got help and looked happier (make a happy face).”
• Share your thoughts and feelings. Talk about what you notice, how you feel, why you feel it, and what signs you are giving even when it’s uncomfortable. “I did not expect this room to be so messy. I don’t know how to clean it up before our friends arrive. This big mess is making me feel very worried. Maybe I will feel better after we put your blocks into the bin. Can you help, too? I am sure we can handle this big mess if we work together.”
• Talk aloud about how you respond to your big feelings: “It made me feel so much better to tell you how I was feeling and to ask for help.”

Your daily routines allow you and your child to practice new vital skills if you seize those chances. With practice, your child will improve over time as you give them the opportunity with support. Practice grows vital new brain connections that strengthen (and eventually form habits) each time your child works hard toward a goal or demonstrates belief in themselves.

The practice also provides important opportunities to grow self-efficacy – a child’s sense that they can do a task successfully. This leads to confidence. It helps them understand that mistakes and failures are part of learning.

To grow resilience, it is important to practice noticing feelings, engaging in just-right-sized challenges, noticing the trusted adults who are always there to help, and remembering the child’s strengths, including pride in their own culture, which can help them get through challenging situations.

Actions

• Your child will thrive with a predictable daily routine. Calmly managing interruptions to that routine will build resilience. Help your child learn their daily routine and highlight moments when it will change. “Tomorrow, we will be traveling!  We will be traveling during your nap time, but you can sleep in the car when you are tired.”
• Retell your story of overcoming a change in routine. “Do you remember when we traveled to grandma’s house last weekend? Traveling during nap time was different for us, and we did it!”
• Narrate your day as you go about your household chores or run errands. This narration fosters a connection with your child and provides many opportunities to share how to overcome challenges.
• Use your child’s dolls or stuffed animals to act out moments of resilience-building. This is an excellent way to practice facing significant challenges that your child might be experiencing or about to experience, such as a move, a new baby in the family, or a significant medical situation. You can name the feelings the doll might feel and develop strategies to help the doll feel stronger to face the challenge. Should the doll take a breath and ask for help? Should the doll bring something that will make them feel better? Does the doll have special skills that can help them in this moment?

At this point, you’ve shown your child that you can be trusted to be there when they need you. Your child is learning to notice when they feel worried, fear, or stressed when encountering new situations. Together, you brainstorm ways to overcome a challenge and recognize the pride and success of feeling resilient.

You can offer support when needed by reteaching, monitoring, and coaching. This support tells your child that you see their challenge and are here to support them. Parents and those in a parenting role naturally offer support as they see their child fumble with a situation in which they need help. This is no different.

Actions

• Learn about your child’s development. Each new age presents different challenges, and being informed about your child’s developmental milestones can offer guidance on appropriate challenges.
• Recognize effort by using “I notice…” statements like: “I noticed that you were nervous about having to nap in a different room, but you did it. I love seeing that.”
• On days with extra challenges, when you can see your child is scared of new people or situations, offer confidence in your child’s ability to face the new. In a gentle, non-public way, you can say, “You tried something like this before, and it was fun. It’s OK to try this.”
• Actively reflect on how your child is feeling when approaching challenges. You can offer reflections like: “You seem worried. I will hold your hand, and we can do it together.” Offering comfort when facing new situations can help your child gain a sense of security and face them rather than backing away.
  • You can also offer comfort items to help your child face new challenges. “Would your bear help you feel better?” Bring a comfort item with you as you face new challenges.

No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also promotes safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.

There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You were able to take your nap at Grandma’s house—I love seeing that!”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile or hug.

Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job.  A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect.  A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

Actions

• Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after getting through your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed. Or, in the morning, once ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.

Closing

Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.