Teaching Children to be Adaptable

Collaborative post. As your child grows up, they will start to form their own likes and dislikes. As with everyone, they’ll also experience failure and difficulties along the way. Being adaptable and pushing through when the odds are stacked against you isn’t easy but is something that you can work on with your child. It will really help them in the many a challenges to come and help them develop their independence. Once children start school they will use the skills they have learnt and develop them further. I’ve teamed up with a private school in Bath to share ways that you can help your child become more adaptable.

Teaching Children to be Adaptable

Explore Coping Strategies to Find What Works for Them

Coping strategies are methods associated with mindfulness that help to alleviate stress and anxiety. When faced with a challenge or difficult feelings, children can use them to calm down and collect themselves. They typically involve some sort of breathing exercise to bring down the heart rate and in turn offer clarity. This helps to make issues seem less intimidating and more manageable.

Work on Problem Solving

Problems come in all different shapes and sizes. By teaching your child how to problem-solve, you can prepare them to tackle whatever comes their way. Problem solving is essentially the ability to come up with innovative solutions by looking at things from different perspectives. That means using creativity and imagination. This is something that children can build on by reading books as they’re left guessing and formulating their own ideas. A widened worldview and improved knowledge can also help with this.

Allow Them To Experience Failure

Although we don’t like to see our children fail, failure is a part of life. Letting your child encounter some sort of failure gives them the opportunity to try and bounce back from it. It can be a real learning experience and teach them that they’ll be okay when things don’t go as planned.

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Encourage Them to Ask for Help

It can be hard to ask for help when you’re passionate about something and want to do it yourself. Asking for help doesn’t make us weak. It’s important for our children to know that as it teaches them invaluable skills as we all have things that we can learn from one another. It can help them to be more efficient work on their communication and listening skills and make the journey to reach their goals easier.

Try Not to Swoop In to Help too Soon

It might be frustrating seeing your child attempt something for the 100th time but allowing them to figure things out for themselves can help them in developing their adaptability. In the process, they can learn more about the world around them and develop independence.

Being adaptable is an important skill to have. The more adaptable a child is the better equipped they are to handle situations that may arise in their personal and school life. This will be built upon as they grow and help them as adults.

When Teaching Children to be Adaptable, what do you think is effective? Is there anything you’d add to the suggestions here?

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This Post Has 47 Comments

  1. Beth

    I think adaptability is one of the greatest things we can teach our children. Life throws you lots of curveballs, and it’s important to be able to roll with it.

    1. admin

      That’s very true life is a bit up and down. You need to be able to adapt when this happens.

  2. Tara Pittman

    So many times we want our kids to do good and don’t allow them to make mistakes. We need to let them make mistakes so they can learn.

    1. admin

      That’s very true. There are some parents that expect perfection all the time. Without mistakes how can we learn!

  3. Terri Steffes

    Yes, experience failure and boredom. Imagination stems from boredom and courage from failure.

    1. admin

      That’s very true. We need to have these experiences to develop.

  4. Lavanda Michelle

    Adaptation is very important in a child’s life. Learning that failure is a part of life is important.

    1. admin

      It really is and they need to experience it to learn how to cope with failing as well as learning from their mistakes.

  5. Kacie Morgan

    Adaptability is such a wonderful skill for all children to learn; who knows when it may help them at some point during their lives.

    1. admin

      It is one of those skills that is needed often from childhood to adult life so it’s important to learn early.

  6. Elizabeth Neas

    I always asked my kids to ask for help if needed. They became strong and independent adults all on their own. They still at times even as adults ask questions if needed. But otherwise, they are all doing fine off on their own.

    1. admin

      It sounds like you did a great job there. It’s important to help them become adaptable and also independent.

  7. sandy lynn ralph

    learning via mistakes is good for kids to adapt and learn from

    1. admin

      It really is. That’s how we learn.

  8. Alita Pacio

    we all want to raise our kids with adaptability. It’s a good attitude to have and thanks for sharing these strategies.

    1. admin

      That’s good to hear. It’s easy enough to do and to slip into daily life.

  9. briannemanzb

    Children need to be taught to be adaptable in everyday life so that they can learn the skill of thinking with more flexibility. These re all great tips. I think encouraging them to always ask for help is important.

    1. admin

      Asking for help is very important. There is a time to push and try and a time to learn from others experience.

  10. Claudia

    I would love to teach my kids adaptability. They are better at dealing with changes when they grow up.

    1. admin

      It can help them a lot in school and future life.

  11. Amber Myers

    Yes, failure is a must. I always tell my kids failures are what helps us learn the most. It’s hard to watch kids make mistakes but I remind myself it’s an important lesson.

    1. admin

      I know what you mean but they do need to do them every so often. It’s a good way to learn.

  12. Tasheena

    This is such an awesome post, It’s so important to teach your children how become adaptable.

    1. admin

      It really is Tasheena.

  13. Risa Lopez

    I don’t have kids yet but I have nieces and nephews. For me, sometimes we need to explore and learn new things. Educate them if they made mistakes.

    1. admin

      That’s true, but we also need them to make mistakes so that they can also teach themselves.

  14. Rose Ann Sales

    I totally agree on this one, that is so true, failures are great experience and with a great experience comes with a great lesson.

    1. admin

      That is absolutely right. We learn from getting things wrong as we then need to think through what we did and fix the problem(s).

  15. Lori Bosworth

    I think that is an excellent suggestion to let your child experience failure. Failure is a natural part of life and often precedes success. Children and adults need to learn that there is no shame in “failure”.

    1. admin

      It’s true, those that learn to accept this are more likely to be able to adapt and be successful.

  16. Chad

    I can’t express how important this post is especially since I see a lot of my friends that have kids over protecting them. “Allow them to experience failure” Absolutely!!!

    1. admin

      Overprotecting children does far more damage than good. As parents, we need to learn to see this and address the issue.

  17. Marysa

    It is good to let kids think things through on their own and do some problem solving. I think too often parents enable their kids instead of giving them the life skills of figuring things out on their own.

    1. admin

      Parents can sometimes be too quick to jump in but it can be important to take a step back and let the kids figure things out for themselves.

  18. Tammy

    Thank you for saying to let your child fail. Winning all the time isn’t the solution. We learn so much from failing.

    1. admin

      It’s very true. We can learn so much from our own mistakes.

  19. Ash C

    As a mum I find that I try to help my kids too soon and don’t give enough time for them to problem solve themselves so these are good tips for parents to learn from

    1. admin

      Problem solving is a very good skill to have.

  20. Rhian Westbury

    It’s so important for kids to be adaptable, but you’re right about not swooping in too early as you want to give them time to work things out for themselves x

    1. admin

      It can make a big difference to their development.

  21. Catalina

    I think that this is a very important feature. My older kid need to learn to ask for help and we a working on it.

    1. admin

      That’s good that you are aware and doing something about it x

  22. Jupiter Hadley

    I am so guilty of trying to help too soon or trying to be too much apart of their projects instead of letting them problem solve on their own. It’s a tough challenge.

  23. mel

    I totally agree, it’s so important to teach kids to be adaptable! I encourage them to ask for help whenever they need it

  24. Wendy Lam-Vechi

    It is so easy to a helicopter parent over your child, doing everything for them and not allowing them to failure. But since I’ve started to allow my 4 year old son to try things out for himself, he has become more adaptable.

  25. Carly Belsey

    Im so guilty of swooping in to soon and really need to stop doing this. Great tips.

  26. Samantha Donnelly

    This is such an imporrtant lesson we can teach our children, as we know in life sometimes things do not go as planned. Being able to deal with it is what we can teach them. Now if it is my grandkids I do swoop in as thats what Nannys do

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