You can help your teen build resilience by sharing strategies and activities that teach healthy coping skills, develop improved self-efficacy, and improve their ability to advocate for themself.
Resilience
Resilience refers to the ability to adapt or recover when faced with stress or adversity. Stressors faced by teens vary widely. You can choose various approaches to these activities to help support the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional aspects of teen wellbeing.
Supporting physical resilience
Fostering physical resilience can include maintaining proper nutrition, getting enough sleep, spending time in nature, and being physically active.
Supporting emotional resilience
Fostering emotional resilience involves confronting and acknowledging emotions instead of avoiding them. Positive emotional resilience means feeling connected, accepted, and supported.
One way to support emotional resilience is by helping improve your teen’s awareness of available resources and supports (For example, counselling, peer supports, mentorship programs), and encouraging them to access these resources as well as lean on their social support networks during difficult times.
Supporting spiritual resilience
Fostering spiritual resilience involves valuing different worldviews across cultures, ethnic backgrounds, nations and languages, and respecting each person’s belief systems and spirituality.
It is important for your teen to explore and embrace their own spiritual practices and beliefs, while also respecting and becoming educated on the beliefs and practices of their family.
Supporting mental resilience
Fostering mental resilience involves understanding and engaging in regular self-care activities and healthy coping.
You can support your teen’s mental resilience by inviting them to reflect on and develop their strengths and learn how to use them during times of stress.
Foundational strategies for promoting resilience
You can help your teen build resilience by practicing these strategies:
- Praise/acknowledge your teen’s accomplishments both in private and in front of their peers. Celebrate them to enhance their sense of belonging and pride/achievement.
- Create realistic expectations for what your teen can accomplish. Try to be flexible and consider creating goals that are reasonable for your teen.
- Embrace and promote a growth mindset, reminding your teen that they are not defined by their shortcomings. Encourage them to continue to grow and improve in all areas of life. Share that it is necessary to make mistakes as we grow, but resilience is taking ownership of them and learning from them. A growth mindset moves away from saying things like “not” and “can’t” to saying something more positive like “not yet.”
- Increase your teen’s sense of autonomy by providing them with opportunities for decision-making and choice.
- Do not compare your teen to others, including their siblings or friends. Recognize that each person has their own unique strengths, talents, and needs.
- Encourage your teen to determine how they learn best and what kind of support they need to succeed.
- Make sure your teen is aware of resources available to them online, through family and friends, in the community and through your healthcare benefit plan if you have one and encourage them to access those that may be helpful.
Activities that promote teen resilience
These activities were developed with educators to help build resilience for teens from age 13 to 18. Review the list below and choose those you feel your teen would benefit from and be open to completing.
Identify your strengths
By identifying and playing to their strengths, teens can maximize their ability to commit to thriving. Every person has character strengths or positive qualities that are part of who we are. It’s much easier for us to use our strengths during times of adversity than to try to manage our weaknesses.
After completing this activity your teen will be able to:
- Identify and appreciate their strengths
- Consider how these strengths could be leveraged during times of stress
- Feel an improved sense of belonging in their classroom
Provide the Identify your strengths worksheet | PDF for your teen to complete and keep for themselves. We invite you to change or add to this list or invite your teen to create their own!
Social support networks
Strong social support networks and a sense of belonging are important to your teen’s wellbeing. Social support refers to the care and support your teen feels from those around them, including friends, family, and others their community.
This activity invites your teen to identify people in their lives who can provide them support across multiple areas of their lives.
After completing this activity your teen will be able to:
- Identify the people in their life who can provide them with support in different areas of their life
- Recognize that support can come from multiple sources
- Feel more confident in their ability to reach out for help from someone they trust
Provide the Social support networks worksheet | PDF for your teen to complete and keep for themselves.
Once your teen has identified people who can support them, they’re asked to list everyone they support in some way. This helps them understand that life is about both giving and receiving.
Choosing healthy strategies
There are many strategies that can help reduce the negative impact of stressors on your teen. The lists given in the worksheet include potential strategies your teen can use to help prevent or manage stressful experiences.
It’s important to note that not all strategies will work for every teen, and that’s okay. In fact, some may actually cause increased stress because they are not calming or relaxing to the individual. Others may have no positive or negative impact whatsoever. By encouraging your teen to seek out activities that help alleviate their stressors, you can positively contribute to their wellbeing.
After completing this activity your teen will be able to:
- Identify the strategies that work for them to lower stress levels
- Discover new ways to cope with and manage stress
Provide the Choosing healthy strategies worksheet | PDF for your teen to complete and keep for themselves.
Connect with nature
A connection to nature through walking or gardening can help relieve anxiety.
Nature walk or hike: Take your teen on a walk in nature. Invite your teen to consider other ways they can connect with nature on a regular basis while on your walk. For younger teens, consider adding a “collection” component, where your teen completes a nature-inspired scavenger hunt.
Build and maintain a garden: Build a garden with your teen. Allow your teen to choose what to plant, invite them to help maintain the garden and harvest the bounty together. This activity can also be used as an option for an upset teen who may want to step away from stressful situations now and then.
You may also use the Connect with nature worksheet | PDF to explore the benefits of connecting with nature.
Weekly check-in
A weekly check in helps your teen become aware of their emotions and set small, realistic goals.
After completing this activity your teen will be able to:
- Reflect on how they are feeling in the moment (social-emotional awareness)
- Practice setting attainable, short-term goals
- Have an opportunity to share any concerns with you or their teacher
Provide the Weekly check-in worksheet | PDF for your teen to complete and keep for themselves.
30 days of kindness
Challenge your teen to complete as many acts of kindness as they can for a month. This activity is simple and provides a great opportunity for a debrief at the end of the month to engage your teen to reflect on how these acts of kindness made them feel or changed their view of themselves.
After completing this activity your teen should:
- Gain a greater sense of accomplishment and appreciation for the impact small acts of kindness can have on both them and others
- Experience improved self-esteem
Provide the 30 days of kindness handout | PDF for your teen to complete and keep for themselves.
Self-awareness and self-advocacy
This activity will allow your teen to engage in some self-reflection on their likes and dislikes, their qualities, strengths, and weaknesses. In improving self-awareness, your teen will be better prepared to advocate for themselves to meet their needs.
Provide the Self-awareness and self-advocacy worksheet | PDF for your teen to complete and keep for themselves.
Acknowledgments
These resources were developed in consultation with educators from across Canada and are helpful for anyone invested in the success and wellbeing of teens.
Led by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health (Canada Life), this resource was developed in consultation with Indigenous educators and educators of Indigenous teens across Canada, but they are valuable for teens of all backgrounds. We would like to acknowledge and thank every educator who participated in the development of this resource, for sharing your knowledge with us and inviting us to circle: Brittany Fitzgerald, Doreen Stevens, Stephanie Bernard, Holly Hudson, Pam Marston, Tina Baldwin, and Jolene Pederson.
We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to all members of our Advisory Committee, including: Omarla Cookie, Alexandra Fortier, Yvonne Gauthier, Celeste Tootoosis, Rebecca Scirocco, Heather Stuart, and Allan Courchene.