Resilient Families Archives - Bounceback Parenting

Resilient Families

We’re learning how to create a resilient, emotionally healthy family culture. Here you’ll find honest parenting stories and ideas for developing resilient families. We’re letting go of perfect, we’re forgiving ourselves over and over and we’re growing together.

Glad you’re here!

I am not psychologist or therapist, I am a mom who has studied and implemented ideas I’ve found on family resilience and connection for the sake of my own family, and I am a parenting mentor who has worked with other families helping them create more connection and positive communication in their own families. The perspectives shared here on Bounceback Parenting come from my own experiences and studies.

I do my best to share honestly about the unexpected challenges, fears frustrations we’ve faced in our family, and many readers share in the comments as well. Knowing you are not alone is validating and comforting.

A few of my influences in regards to parenting and family resilience include:
(These are Amazon affiliate links).

Strengthening Family Resilience by Froma Walsh, Ph.D.
Mindset by Carol Dweck Ph.D.
Mindsight by Dan Siegel M.D.
Connection Parenting by Pam Leo
Taking the War Out of Our Words by Sharon Strand Ellison

What does it mean to be a resilient family?

First, we may need to change perspective here. A resilient family isn’t a fixed state of being, something you either are or are not. Family resilience is something we can grow over time by cultivating family processes and capabilities that allow us to cope with difficulties, learn from challenges, and solve problems together.

“Resilience can be defined as the capacity to rebound from adversity strengthened and more resourceful.” “What distinguishes healthy families is not the absence of problems or suffering but rather their coping and problem solving abilities.”
~Froma Walsh

Some of the topics I talk about here on Bounceback Parenting that helps you develop greater resilience in your family include:

Practicing Presence: Trying to find a bit more mindfulness and bit less judgement in ourselves so that we increase the ability to pause and respond rather than simply reacting.
Strengths-Based Perspective: Empowering our children and ourselves. Developing a growth mindset in our families.
Open Communication: Improving the clarity of our communication through better listening, and deepening our understanding of our own communication habits and needs.
Emotional Health: Learning more about healthy experience and expression of emotions in ourselves and others.
Flexible Routines – Simplifying daily routines of family life to increase your ability to bounce back when the inevitable disruptions occur.

Hare are a few of readers favorite posts on these topics, and of course you can find more in my other categories on connecting with kids, dealing with anger, and taking care of yourself.

Aug 29

Gratitude Sprinkler Experiment – can we change complaints to gratitude?

I started an experiment a couple weeks ago: whenever one of my kids starts randomly complaining to me, I am randomly making gratitude statements. Just spewing them out. I'm grateful this! I'm grateful that! I become like a gratitude sprinkler. So yesterday my daughter was complaining about an [...]Continue Reading

Aug 28

Five Power Words To Make Your Kids Confident

As a children grow, it's often their parents who form and shape their self-confidence. As your child learned to walk, you were probably there on the sidelines offering encouragement and comfort when they fell. By way of perseverance, your child learned the skill after many attempts. Children learn [...]Continue Reading

Aug 6

Parenting Secret Mission: Rediscovering Respect

Your mission this month will strengthen the foundations of good communication in your family and lead to more responsible, respectful kids. You mission: Rediscover respect. Why Rediscover Respect? Respect is something we tend to understand in it's absence - noticing when someone has [...]Continue Reading

Jul 26

All Kids Need to Believe This About Themselves – Superkids Manifesto

Join the Superkids Movement with Me! Can you imagine (or perhaps remember) spending your entire childhood misunderstood and constantly being called things like "picky" "difficult" "messy" or "stubborn"? Or maybe you have a child who could easily fall into one of these labels. I know I do. What [...]Continue Reading

Jun 23

Resilience Activities – 9 Resilience Building Activities for Parents to do with Kids

One of the primary character strengths we work to build with Bounceback Parenting® is resilience. This vital quality is what allows people to make it through challenges and come out stronger than they were before. Today we have Dominic Chapman, a dad to twins, resilience teacher and founder of [...]Continue Reading

Jun 16

Using Specific Language to Get Kids to Listen

When we say "Get Kids to Listen" usually what we mean is: I want my kids to follow my directions. One of the tricks to this though, is learning to give directions that kids can follow successfully. We were staying at a hotel with a pool when I got a great reminder of how NOT to get my kids to [...]Continue Reading