7 Ways to Build Grit and Resilience in Teens: A Guide for Parents

Adolescence can be such a trying time in a young person’s life, yet it is absolutely essential to their growth as an individual. Because of these paradoxical factors, it can feel as if an enormous amount of weight is put upon the teenage years. To this end, both living through teenagerdom as a young adult and being a parent to a teenager can be exceedingly difficult. Fortunately, Jesse LeBeau, a Youth Motivational Speaker, is here to help. His first-of-its-kind program, The Attitude Advantage Program (TAAP), helps parents develop practical measures to impart lessons of grit and resilience to their teenagers.

Grit and Resilience

The terms grit and resilience almost certainly sound familiar to you, but it can be useful to define them explicitly. Grit is a quality of perseverance and dedication. To have grit is to steadfastly remain committed to something, even when it’s hard, boring, or feels impossible. Grit is a term often used in the world of sports to describe players who persevere through seasons of hardship or failure to emerge victorious, specifically because they had grit and stuck with their team through it all.

By contrast, resilience is about bouncing back after failures. Where grit is about sticking with something through thick and thin, resilience is about picking yourself back up after a failure and having the strength, courage and confidence to carry on and find success in its aftermath.

Seven Ways to Build Grit and Resilience in Your Teen

1. Encourage a Growth Mindset

Teenage years are filled with hormonal changes, which can lead to quite a bit of dramatic flair. In this way, even the smallest of failures can feel utterly detrimental to the teenage mind. As such, a crucial lesson parents can teach their teenager is to embrace a growth mindset. Rather than viewing a failure as the end of the conversation, it is important to teach them the skills to instead view challenges as merely interludes, creating further opportunity for growth.

2. Teach the Power of Goal-Setting

Setting attainable but ambitious goals can help teenagers develop confidence and adaptability. It provides structure to the occasionally ambiguous life of a teenager and helps to make them feel like they are making measurable progress on their journey toward adulthood.

3. Help Teens Overcome Obstacles and Challenges

When challenges present themselves, do not rescue your teenager from them, but instead, help guide them through the process. As the old saying goes, “Give someone a fish, and they eat once. Teach them to fish, and they eat for life.”

4. Model Resilient Behaviors as a Parent or Mentor

Whether they let on or not, your teenager’s biggest influence is you. They are watching your every move and responding to it on a subconscious level, meaning that one of the best things you can do for them is simply set a positive example.

5. Provide Opportunities for Struggle and Growth

Do not overprotect your teenager from the world. To coddle your teenager now will only make their life far more difficult in the long run. Instead, present them with opportunities for hands-on learning and growth that can contribute rather than hinder.

6. Teach Effective Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills

Equip your teenager with the tools to better deduce, understand and analyze situations. Through these means, they will become far more articulate and intellectual decision-makers.

7. Build Strong and Supportive Relationships

Most of all, teach your teenager the value of strong and supportive relationships by building one with them.

Final Thoughts

The Attitude Advantage Program helps parents develop practical strategies to better impart key traits such as grit and resilience to their teenagers. These traits are necessary for navigating challenges, building confidence and achieving long-term success. The Attitude Advantage Program offers timely and actionable advice for parents who are striving to raise strong, emotionally resilient children in today’s fast-paced world.