A special guest blog series by Mollie Marti, PhD, founder and CEO of the National Resilience Institute
As youth move throughout their daily lives, they encounter many people in various contexts. They might move from home to the classroom to an after-school program or sports practice, to in-person or online tutoring—each supplying opportunities to connect and build relationships.
This span of touch points creates the opportunity for individually unique webs of support that can serve as a resource when difficult things happen in life. Each person in a child’s life has the ability to contribute to the capacity of that child to identify, grow, and share their unique strengths. For example, an educator might build skills in a ridicule-free environment, meeting needs for safety and competence, while a coach might develop an atmosphere of unity and drive within the team, meeting needs for belonging and purpose.
As an adult contributing to the web of support, you have a unique and important role to play. Your own flavor of support within your context interweaves with the support received from others to form a force that primes youth to be resilient.
So where do you start? Below are six ways, garnered both from research and years of practice, that you can prime resilience in youth.