Perseverance and Encouragement: Antidotes to a Child's Anxiety

Have you noticed how children’s idea of perseverance is often to spend hours trying to model themselves on whoever they’re following on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube? More make-up, more pout, more acquiring of the latest thing!

This is all about BEING. Trying to BE something that someone else is.

What I want to discuss here is DOING – meaning, our children carrying on DOING until they manage to DO whatever it is they have to manage. That's perseverance of a good kind.

But to achieve that kind of ability, they need our encouragement. And with encouragement to gain a measure of perseverance, they're set up to stop anxiety in its tracks. It's worth fighting for!

Isn’t self-discipline the same as perseverance?

Yes! But doesn’t it sound old-fashioned, unappetising and generally horrible! “The trouble with you,” we’re tempted to shout when our child gives up, “is you’ve got no self-discipline!” How encouraging is that!!

However, self-discipline is not out of date. So let’s call it perseverance and move on to why it’s worth encouraging.

And the first reason is that persevering with a task has been proved to up success rates in school and in life. What’s not to love about having that skill?

I nearly said “ability” there – but that sounds a bit like innate ability, whereas perseverance is an art you can learn. It then becomes a true ability, even if you never had it from the start.

Another reason for encouraging perseverance or self-discipline is that it empowers your child to learn a way through a problem – and that minimises anxiety. They realise they can try again and perhaps manage whatever it is.

So I'm going to offer 11 ways we can encourage a child to learn to persevere.

11 Ways to encourage your child to develop perseverance

1 Ensure they have enough sleep – if they’re short of sleep, they will not be able to concentrate well enough to keep persevering. Feeling a failure then results in anxiety.

2 Remove pressure to succeed – make sure they know you’ll love them whatever the outcome. Their chief need is to be loved and accepted and belong. Take this away (even in their minds) and they lose the will to do anything worthwhile.

3 Praise their efforts not the end result. This instills pride not anxiety. They will try again in order to improve (see below) and also win more praise.

4 Help them see that we’re all improving all the time – that’s how life works!

5 Limit your verbal expectations of them to “just above” what they can achieve now. Too big a “jump” causes more anxiety, not perseverance!

6 Demonstrate and model that failures are part of achieving anything. And at least failing tells you what not to do again! Use bother bother if need be, to make it fun, and don’t hide your own opportunities to persevere and try again!

7 Point out even the smallest win that you see. In fact, encouragement usually means focusing on the positive bits – in general behaviour as well as managing tasks. It works better.

8 Find some ways to encourage perseverance in small doses – like trying for 10 minutes and then later for another 10. That sort of thing. That’s what they’d do if it were a smartphone game. They’d start again. So point out the comparison and try to make it fun!

9 Teach them the value of hope and “these things too will pass”. The whole world is not as violent as the news makes it seem. Hope inspires greater efforts – you know, the opposite of feeling hopeless, no point, useless!

10 Give them a little bit of a hint but don’t take over. Being told what’s wrong (“You’re putting it in the wrong place”) is soul-destroying, disempowering, and they’ll want and expect you to take over and finish whatever it is. On the other hand, if you give a tentative pointer in terms of “I wonder if it might perhaps work to…?” and go back to what you were doing, this leaves the "clever solving bit" to them!

11 In the same way as above, find ways to let them do absolutely everything they’re able to do – don’t accidentally become their dogsbody! Self-reliance means they'll learn to persevere with difficult things because they already feel good about their abilities.

Remember... everything you do to help in the above ways is encouraging to your child to learn perseverance, which helps them succeed in school and life, and mitigates against anxiety.

Perseverance is at the bottom of thriving – and an antidote to anxiety

American author and educational psychologist Michele Borba wrote a lovely book last year (2021) – she really gets parenting and makes reading a book interesting and helpful, with lots of stories and anecdotes from her practice and research interviews with children and young people. The book is Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine.

(I get no benefit from Amazon links, by the way.)

Borba has a lot to say on the topic of developing your child’s

• perseverance,
• self-confidence,
• self-control,
• empathy,
• integrity,
• curiosity and
• optimism...

...but if you only read the introduction, Running on Empty: We’re raising a generation of strivers, not thrivers, I believe you’ll find a trove of interesting stuff to inspire you as you help your child learn perseverance! But you’ll have to judge that yourself! Give it a go?

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ALWAYS:

Trust your instincts,
use your judgement, protect the spirit
of your child