Challenges or obstacles are a given; everyone, including kids, must face them at some point in their lifetime. Considering this, the best thing you can do for your children is to build their resilience using the right tools and sound advice.
This article is for you if you’re a parent looking for some resilience quotes for kids that will help children develop the mental toughness and self-belief for overcoming obstacles they may face as they grow.
These kid-friendly resilience quotes convey powerful messages to help children understand that they can improve their circumstances no matter what. Repeat them as often as possible to impress the messages on your child’s mind and foster resilience.
Explaining Resilience to a Child
As an adult, you already know that resilience is the capacity to power through hard, rough times without throwing in the towel. It also means recovering quickly from hardship or difficulties.
To empower kids with resilience quotes, you must first find a way to explain to them what it means to have a resilient quality.
How do you do that?
Teach your children that resilience is all about being persistent. Let them know that hurdles are a normal part of life and that they need to overcome them to be successful in whatever they do.
Help kids understand that it is okay to feel sad and frustrated sometimes. However, instead of fixating on how awful things are, teach them to pick themselves up whenever they experience setbacks.
Inspiring and nurturing a determined mindset in kids leads to toughness, bravery, independence, and confidence.
Do Resilience Quotes for Kids Really Work?
Ever heard someone say, “My father used to say…” or “My mom always told me…” and they follow that with a life-changing quote or saying that stuck with them all their lives?
That’s the power of quotes!
Think of resilience quotes like affirmations for kids; the more frequently you say them to your children, the more they firmly believe and live by them.
It is okay to feel a bit awkward when you introduce these quotes to your kids for the first time. But do it anyway!
Although you may not see immediate results, your words will readily come to mind when your kids face obstacles.
Yes, I said “your words.”
Quotes are faceless unless you know the authors. Besides, children usually don’t know quote authors. And since your kids look up to you, they consider the quotes yours.
But here’s the most important thing to keep in mind.
Children learn more from their parent’s actions than words. Remember that you are your child’s most important role model, so let your actions ― toughness in the face of challenges ― match your words and quotes.
With that out of the way, here are some resilience quotes to share with your kids to help them power through difficult situations and thrive.
15 Resilience Quotes for Kids
- “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” – JK Rowling
- “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” – Mary Anne Radmacher
- “The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.” – Woodrow Wilson
- “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” – Elizabeth Edwards
- “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “I’ve always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way, and you’ve got to have that drive and determination to overcome those obstacles on route to whatever it is that you want to accomplish.” – Chuck Norris
- “No matter what your current condition, how or where you grew up, or what education or training you feel you lack, you can be successful in your chosen endeavor. It is spirit, fortitude, and hardiness that matter more than where you start.” – Jack Ma
- “You must bear losses like a soldier, the voice told me, bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward. That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong.” – Margaret George
- “No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength ― if we have the virtue of resilience.” – Eric Greitens
- “Like tiny seeds with potent power to push through tough ground and become mighty trees, we hold innate reserves of unimaginable strength. We are resilient.” – Catherine DeVrye
- “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison
- “We all have battles to fight. And it’s often in those battles that we are most alive: it’s on the frontlines of our lives that we earn wisdom, create joy, forge friendships, discover happiness, find love, and do purposeful work.” – Eric Greitens
- “Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.” – Jean Chatzky
- “F-E-A-R has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.” – Zig Ziglar
Making the Most of Resilience Quotes for Kids
Reading quotes to your kids or making your children read them is great. But you’ll have to do more than that to get your children to build mental toughness and resilience.
Here are a few tips to help you make the most of these quotes:
1. Develop a Strong Bond With Your Child
Build a strong relationship with your child; this is the foundation for fostering resilience in children.
If your parenting needs a little work, I recommend learning a few important parenting strengths to improve the relationship with your child.
2. Encourage Kids to Solve Problems Themselves
Allow your child to attempt solving problems themselves. Being there for your child doesn’t necessarily translate into protecting them from experiencing frustration.
If you always rescue your kids from difficulties right away, you deprive them of the opportunity to develop important survival skills to thrive on their own.
3. Help Children Learn From Setbacks
Instead of railing against unwanted circumstances, teach your kids to learn from disappointments and setbacks.
You can do this by praising their commitment, perseverance, or hard work despite the failure they experienced.
For example, your child didn’t win a competition despite working so hard to succeed. Help him or her to realize that success isn’t about winning but the improvement that comes from working hard to be successful.
4. Teach Kids to Manage Their Emotions
Getting a handle on emotions is a critical element of resilience, and one of the most practical ways kids can manage their emotions is to identify and name them.
When things aren’t going according to plan, teach your kids to pause, notice, and name what they feel in the moment. Is it frustration, dissatisfaction, or rage?
By interrupting a disruptive emotion, kids (and even adults, too!) can make better decisions instead of letting themselves get carried away by disorienting feelings.
5. Have an Arsenal of Encouraging Phrases
Helping your child become more resilient is no easy task. But you can make things a little easier by readying yourself with a handful of go-to phrases to offer support when your child faces a challenge.
Don’t have any encouraging phrases? Try these:
- You’ve got this.
- That sounds challenging, but I have faith in you.
- I can see you’re working hard on that.
- I’m sure you can handle it.
- Give it your best then we’ll work through the rest together.
- How do you feel about… (fill in the challenging situation)?
- What do you think is the best way to handle that?
- What do you plan to do now?
Final Thoughts
Kids are impressionable; the good news is that parents can leverage that quality to shape their children’s lives in a way that will help them boldly take on life’s challenges.
Every day, find opportunities to teach your child a valuable lesson about resilience. They will look back someday and thank you for equipping them to face the ups and downs of life.
If you find these resilience quotes for kids helpful, you will love this collection of I Am Enough Quotes to make adults more resilient.
