By Cantona Joseph | June 2, 2024

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Parenting is overwhelming in the best way possible, by love, joy, responsibility, and selflessness. Parenthood means sleepless nights, smiles, laughs, tears, tantrums, caterpillars on the coffee table, finger-painting in the kitchen – an adventure of a lifetime. 

Stacy Mwendwa, a child psychologist, says that parenthood makes life more colourful and that being a parent, means one has a little person who walks around with their heart and soul in the palm of their hands. 

However, she says parenting is an uphill task and is not for the faint-hearted as bringing up children is a process. 

“One important task of parenting is teaching children about resilience and adaptability, which is about their ability to adapt, an important skill set that could benefit them into adulthood,” says Stacy. 

She explains that resiliency and adaptability have sometimes been used interchangeably, but they are not the same. 

“Resilience is when we face challenges, difficult times, and uncomfortable emotions, we can handle and tolerate,” says the expert, adding that resilience is more about how our nervous system responses — like emotions and physiological distress — tolerate, push through, and bounce back. 

On the other hand, she says, adaptability is the ability to shift, change, adjust, and be responsive to unpredictability, change, surprises, and obstacles. “It is not just adversity or challenge that requires us to be adaptable,” Stacy says.

She notes that adaptability can be good, exciting, positive things, so when children are adaptable, they are cognitively, emotionally, and behaviourally flexible. 

The expert says adaptability is an inborn trait, but children can become more adaptable as their prefrontal cortex matures. That part of the brain controls impulses, manages emotional reactions, predicts consequences, plans the future, and anticipates environmental events. 

“It is something we can get better at, really at any age. It is a developmental challenge they grow through. Adaptability is a sophisticated skill, so this ability develops as the brain becomes more refined,” says Stacy.

She explains that when children are adaptable, they spend less time being reactive and more time being receptive, creative problem-solvers, which translates to their being happier and able to navigate their world as they grow. 

This ability she says, allows the child to feel safer, more competent, and more confident about their environment. 

“Some children instinctively withdraw when presented with new ideas or changes, while others are naturally receptive to new people, places, and experiences,” says the expert, adding that when children are given opportunities to practice and successfully navigate changes, their capacity can be expanded. 

“The Covid-19 pandemic taught my wife and me a lot in terms of adjusting to the latest pandemic challenges – a new kind of mask, disrupted school schedules because of infected teachers and bus drivers; frequent testing procedures, all of which unknowingly prepared pre-teen children for even bigger obstacles later in their lives,” says Brian Shem, a father of two sons and a daughter. 

He says the children have developed resilience to situations and ways of adapting to challenges such as when they lost the family car and had to adapt to using public transport, which affected their morning and evening routines. 

“With the fast-moving world, families find parenting has been redefined and has become more challenging and call for tactful navigating,” says Stacy. 

She gives the following guidelines on how parents can develop these skills in their children. The ability to adapt varies from child to child. So first, find out how adaptable your child is. 

For instance, when a child is hesitant to go to a new school or try out a new hobby, it may be due to their personality, but not out of fear. Instead, the child may just not be comfortable with jumping right in. They need to see things first. 

The expert says less adaptable children tend to be more rigid,  resistant, and less comfortable around unfamiliar faces. However, they also thrive on routines that can be used to help children feel comfortable in new environments. 

“Children learn best from doing things themselves and by having it modelled for them through narration so that they can internalise them, she says. 

Children also learn a lot about adaptability from peers. Play is good training, because during play with family or friends, things are not always predictable, though sometimes the playmate wants to do things differently from the child, and out of fun, the child is willing to stretch beyond their wishes and preferences for the play to continue. 

Games like chess, in which planning is important can help a child learn to pivot when faced with an obstacle. “Ultimately, adaptability is the ability to imagine alternate scenarios, says the child psychologist. 

According to Stacy, the key to adaptability is not to be wedded to your particular way of viewing the world or a situation. “Teach your child that pivoting — and changing directions — can be fun and interesting. Give them a choice and then walk them through the pros and cons as you encourage their enthusiasm and curiosity about different ways of seeing things,” she says.

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