Our Tamariki Actually Need a Little Bit of Stress in Their Lives!
Sharon Prestidge — July 1, 2024
Staff spent an outstanding Teacher Only Day, and parents had the opportunity to learn with Kathryn Berkett recently. One of the interesting ideas she explored was the concept of tolerable stress and how it helps develop resilience.
Kathryn explained the importance of helping our young people build capacity to be in a state of stress and to be able to self calm - to be resilient. Restoring calm is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced.
The good news is that we have all already helped our children learn this in the first instance when they were babies by playing games such as "Peek- a-Boo", "This Little Piggy" etc etc. These games put the baby in a state of tolerable stress (when we hide) and then bring them back into a space of calm (when we reveal our faces and make eye contact with them). Baby learns how to bring themselves back to a state of clam with the support of a strong adult relationship. As they get older, we might have played hide and seek - the child is in a state of tolerable stress when they are hiding and then they bring themselves back into a state of clam when they are found. This all builds resilience capabilities.
As our children grow and develop, they need our support to keep developing these skills of resilience. They need to experience tolerable stress and be supported in finding their calm again. They need to lose at sport, they need to try things that they might fail at, they need to do things outside of their comfort zone, and they need us as their supportive adults to step back and let those things happen. They need us to give them a chance to be stressed and to recover with the least amount of 'interference' from us. A great way to think of this is to ask yourself "what is the least amount of intervention that help my child here?" Kathryn explores this concept in two videos on the Kahui Ako ki Motueka website. They are well worth taking the time to watch.
