As an in-home carer, one of your most important roles is guiding children in developing skills essential to their development. Among the most vital characteristics you can teach is perseverance. It plays a role in various areas throughout their lives and is essential to overcoming the challenges they face. Indeed, teaching perseverance should start as early as preschool.
Let’s look at a few key areas to focus on when teaching children the importance of perseverance.
Academic Perseverance
Children are likely to experience frequent hurdles in their academic lives. They will be confronted with questions they don’t know the answers to and tasks they don’t yet have the skills to navigate. Unfortunately, without perseverance, children are likely to freeze up and avoid vital learning opportunities rather than address their difficulties head-on.
You can help children adopt perseverance by visualizing it. Mind mapping is a creative way to gain clarity on a problem and devise practical solutions. Set example challenges for children and guide them through identifying the problem and adding branches to understand their various solutions. This type of visualization technique can help them feel more in control of their challenges and committed to academic perseverance.
Social Perseverance
Social perseverance is essential to help children find ways to navigate society and relationships effectively. Your best first approach here is to talk to children about the feelings associated with friendships and socialization. Discuss the positive emotions and the experiences they get to share once they’ve overcome hurdles. This can also lead to discussing the difficult feelings they have whenever they engage in social interactions.
The summertime can be a good opportunity to put social perseverance into practice. Find local group activities in which children need to introduce themselves to new people and form new connections. Help them to see that not all their social interactions will be successful, but the outcomes are worth taking chances to reach out. If you’re having a hard time finding local group activities, invite other children over to allow the children to practice critical social skills at home.
Household Perseverance
One of the frequently overlooked areas of perseverance is related to the household. The chores children need to do help them to develop into responsible adults. It’s also a route to maintaining healthy hygiene habits. However, children often experience pain points here, considering the chores too difficult or too boring to proceed with.
It’s helpful to explain to the child how their chores help them in life. Don’t just focus on their allowance or tangible rewards here. Talk about how a tidy space helps them to play or learn more freely. Use yourself as an example; be a role model by talking about the difficulties you’ve had with chores in your own life but how you also know it’s necessary to stay healthy and happy.
It can also be wise to teach children creative techniques to overcome the mental blocks to their perseverance here. This could be in the form of designing a new playroom arrangement together to make it easier to keep tidy. Discuss storage options that are effective in keeping their toys organized when not in use. Consider seat covers that are simpler to wipe clean. Going through these options with children can help them see they have the power to persevere through their chores by devising solutions.
Conclusion
Perseverance is one of the most valuable skills you can teach the kids in your care. Take the time to understand the various different spaces in which perseverance is useful, from academics to household chores. This can empower you to find ways to help kids understand why these skills are vital as well as pass on techniques to develop key traits.
Katie Brenneman is a passionate writer specializing in lifestyle, mental health, education, and fitness-related content. When she isn’t writing, you can find her with her nose buried in a book or hiking with her dog, Charlie. To connect with Katie, you can follow her on Twitter.