By Tamara Gray, Provisional Psychologist

Adolescence is a time of rapid change, significant growth, and, often, intense thoughts, feelings and behaviours, which can be quite challenging for both young people and their parents/carers to navigate. During these turbulent years, a young person’s sense of security, stability and safety in their social relationships and physical environment can play a major role in their healthy development, functioning and emotional wellbeing. In particular, trusted adults and close friends can play a pivotal role in supporting youth mental health throughout this formative period, helping teenagers to feel safe and supported as they navigate the complexities of their new and sometimes confusing experiences at home, school, work, and other social settings.

Resilience, or the ability to adaptively cope with the range of difficulties and changes that can occur during these challenging and turbulent times, is a key protective factor that can help ensure your child’s mental health, wellbeing and ongoing functioning. Resilience is not a fixed trait that a child either does or does not have; it is a skill set that can be built and strengthened over time, especially with the help of supportive adults who can assist young people in developing the tools they need to bounce back from adversity.

What Resilience Looks Like

Teen resilience isn’t about never feeling sad, anxious, or overwhelmed. True resilience is not about suppressing emotions or "toughening up", but rather reflects the ability to adapt to difficult situations, manage stress, and recover from setbacks as they arise. A resilient teenager might still feel disappointed after a poor exam result or heartbroken after a friendship conflict. However, rather than becoming paralysed by these events, or learning to lash out, avoid, give up, or withdraw, they are able to acknowledge their feelings, gain perspective, and eventually move forward stronger and wiser than before.

A resilient teen will be capable of picking themselves up and trying again after perceived failure, and will be able to ask for support when their load becomes too heavy to manage alone. Building resilience from a young age will help safeguard and support your child’s emotional wellbeing and development over the long-term, easing them through their various life-stage transitions as more well-adjusted, self-sufficient and emotionally capable individuals.

Skills to Teach at Home

Building emotional wellbeing often starts in the home environment and can be observed, taught and developed from an early age. Youth mental health can be supported by explicitly teaching or supporting young people to practice emotional regulation and coping skills in their daily life and socially modelling adaptive coping skills for them.

Below are some practical ways to support your teen to develop their own resilience:

• Modeling resilient behaviour for them: Teenagers are often quite perceptive to what is going on around them and learn more from what adults do, than what they say. It is important that your child sees how you experience and adaptively process and regulate your own challenging emotions (e.g., stress, worry, anger, disappointment). Additionally, talking openly with your child about the challenges you’ve faced and how you handled them, whether that was a helpful or unhelpful approach, and what you would like to do differently or the same in future can help model responsibility and resilience for your child.
• Assisting them with their adaptive problem-solving, rather than solving the problems for them: When your teen comes to you with an issue, resist the urge to fix it immediately. Instead, act as a sounding board to help them troubleshoot and process the situation, and to consider what options they have at their disposal to resolve matters using their own skills and capabilities. This can look like parents guiding their child to:
  • Break down their situation into relevant factors, context, concerns.
  • Review what coping tools are already in their ‘coping toolkit’.
  • Collaboratively brainstorm potential solutions to resolve it.
  • Weigh up pros and cons of different decisions they could make and how helpful/consequential these could be.
  • Discuss what is within their control versus outside of their control, and focusing on the things they can actually fix/change.
• Offering safety and compassion, rather than solutions: Sometimes what your child needs in a moment of uncertainty, distress or concern is a safe person to turn to for non-judgemental comfort and reassurance, rather than someone to solve their problems. Provide space for them to vent frustrations, worries, or challenges to get things off their mind - once calm and safe they will have more capacity to process their thoughts and feelings, emotionally regulate, and independently problem-solve.
• Encouraging a ‘growth mindset’: Help them view ‘failure as feedback’ rather than a reflection of their worth, capability or potential. If they are beating themselves up for making a mistake, help them reframe the situation in context and/or identify areas for future growth.

When to Seek Professional Help

While ups and downs are a normal part of adolescence, it is vital to recognise when a young person may need extra support, as early intervention is key to supporting youth mental health. If you notice significant changes in sleeping or eating habits, physical symptoms of stress or anxiety, persistent withdrawal from friends and family, or a mood that remains low or irritable for more than two weeks, it may be time to seek professional advice.

If you are concerned, speak to your GP about getting a referral for your child to see one of our psychologists at Spencer Health, who can help provide your child/family with a roadmap to supporting your teen’s recovery and growth.