Parents always have their children’s best interest at heart. This is one of the main driving forces behind why they try to send them to a good school, ensure they have a loving household, and make resources accessible for them. It’s far too common for parents to brush over aspects of their children’s development, like the Adversity Quotient — a concept they may not have encountered yet. But don’t worry, because this article aims to give parents like you techniques on how to develop your child’s adversity quotient.
The adversity quotient simply refers to the ability to bounce back or recover after a setback — or as the name suggests, after an adversity. Mental toughness and emotional capacity to handle difficult situations are at the heart of a high AQ. Read on to learn more.
Encourage them to play sports
One of the best and simplest ways to develop AQ in your child is to encourage them to play sports. These activities are highly competitive and sports can teach your child a lot of life lessons that can be useful for them as they continue navigating this world.
Sports allow your child to experience situations of victory, defeat, and failure. These situations help increase their motivation to do better. The more they’re given an opportunity to experience moments of failure, for example, the better equipped they will be to handle it later on in life.
Establish emotional connections with them
Being resilient in the face of adversity doesn’t necessarily mean being out of touch with emotions. In fact, building strong emotional connections among your children is an effective way of developing their AQ.
Make sure that you create a healthy home environment where emotions are allowed to flourish and where everyone can express them freely. Your child looks to you for emotional support and sometimes they may not really fully comprehend their negative emotions. Give your child opportunities to open up to you by letting them explicitly know that you’re always available for a few moments of serious conversation.
By encouraging emotionally-charged connections, you’re enabling your child to recognize and learn to handle them as they grow older.
Teach them to be self-aware
Teaching your child to be self-aware may be something challenging for you as a parent. There must be a willingness to be present in both you and your child for this to be successful. Self-awareness is ultimately the key for your child in understanding their needs, as well as, how their actions affect others and vice-versa.
Spend a few moments with your child reflecting on how their day went and what the remarkable events were during the day. Through reflection, your child is able to gain a better grasp of their inner self and how this extends to the external environment — in their interactions with other people. Self-awareness may be considered as another pillar of the adversity quotient because the presence of the former enables your child to understand their own triggers, responses, and eventually learn how to manage them.
Make them receptive to criticism
Every child wants to feel appreciated and recognized for their achievements. The other side of the coin is the importance of providing them with suggestions on how they can improve. Help them become more receptive to constructive criticism because this can define how well they’ll be able to overcome everyday obstacles that they encounter.
For example, when your child is showing impatience when they’re not getting what they want, let them know that this isn’t the way to go about things. Teach them the right way to act in this kind of situation. In this way, they’ll be able to be aware of their shortcomings and how they can improve on them. This will eventually translate to the way your child deals with problems that they may encounter in college, or even in the workplace.
Key Takeaway
Knowing how to develop your child’s adversity quotient is important in enabling them to handle the many problems that life may throw at them. Though it can be a difficult subject matter to tackle, you hold the responsibility of showing your child that life is not a bed of roses. They need to be able to handle problems on their own without feeling like it’s the end of the world
Through simple acts such as encouraging them to play competitive sports or something as complex as teaching them self-awareness, your child can start off on the right foot on developing a high AQ.
