Fostering Perseverance with Realistic Expectations

Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels

Perseverance and resilience are two terms that are often used interchangeably. Perseverance is the ability to continue working at a goal despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. Resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from stress, adversity, failure, or challenges. The core component of both of these concepts is the idea of distress tolerance. A child’s ability to tolerate unpredictability, deal with failure, and embrace challenges all develop from their capacity to overcome obstacles to work towards a goal. Because our instinct as caregivers is to protect children from feelings of distress and failure, we frequently jump in to support the child before they have the opportunity to develop appropriate strategies or push through uncomfortable feelings to successfully deal with stressful situations on their own. While well-intentioned, this instinct does not serve to increase the child’s distress tolerance. However, there are many ways that we can support children and adolescents in developing perseverance across the lifespan.

When a child struggles with perseverance, they may become easily frustrated, give up on tasks quickly, or avoid challenging or new experiences. These variables are important because inevitably children are going to face challenges. Consider a child who succeeds easily or is always offered assistance when they begin to struggle. This child doesn’t have the chance to build resilience around not succeeding. Subsequently, this child also has less exposure to being challenged and problem solving on their own. We want our children to be comfortable being pushed out of their comfort zone, navigating situations that don’t go exactly according to plan, and taking (safe) risks throughout their lives.

It’s never too early to start fostering perseverance! But if we consider perseverance from a developmental perspective, this skill set looks and feels different at different ages.

Examples of Perseverance Across Developmental Stages

• Toddler zipping their own jacket 

• Young child building a new magnet tile house after it fell down 

• Child sounding out each letter on the page while learning to read

• Middle school student reaching out to apologize after a big argument with a friend even though it feels uncomfortable to reach out first

• High school student keeping at the difficult calculus problem despite continuously getting it wrong
  

When we think about developmental states we also want to be mindful of what crucial skills children are still developing at each stage that may contribute to their ability to persevere on different tasks. For example, young children are still developing the ability to maintain their attention, regulate their emotions, understand right from wrong, and are naturally impulsive. On the other hand, older children begin developing the capacity to think about the thoughts of others, compare themselves to others, and worry more about making mistakes. When considering the following activities to integrate into your routine, keep in mind both your individual child as well as these areas of development.

Daily Practice and Creative Activities

1. Give choices to help kids successfully persevere. Keep in mind that you may need to require they make one choice: 

   1. Let your toddler choose between two outfits, or let them dress themselves (even when you know how much more quickly you could do it!)

   2. Offer your preschooler as many opportunities as you can for making decisions about how to spend their free choice time and (when appropriate) the chance to get messy

   3. Give your school aged child choices about what activities to participate in or what healthy food to have with dinner

   4. Ask your middle schooler what order they want to complete their list of chores

   5. Include your high schooler in conversations about what schedule they feel works best for them to get enough sleep 
      

1. Creative activities to nurture perseverance:

   1. Freeze a toy in an ice cube and then problem solve together how to get it out without breaking or eating the ice cube

   2. Read stories and/or watch movies that illustrate persistence and reference the characters 

   3. Purchase ingredients and then cook or bake the final product

   4. Plan for a trip from start to finish

   5. Resist the urge to swallow 

   6. Try the marshmallow task

   7. Play board games that build distress tolerance (i.e. “Sorry,” “Jenga,” “Suspend”)

   8. Plant seeds and watch them grow

   9. Share one “high” and one “low” from your day during family meals 

Don’t forget that one of the best ways to teach perseverance is to model it. In addition to building further opportunities for skill development into your routine, embracing your own mistakes and identifying when you are outside of your comfort zone is just as important for developing perseverance!