How Do You Teach Children Coping Skills?

Today morning, my sister called me and said that her son is having a hard time these days. His school is regularly complaining about his behavior, and he is always fighting with friends. Therefore, I thought it would be better to share my insights on this matter and the coping skills of children as a nursery teacher.

So, how do you teach children coping skills? Coping skills are needed to tolerate stressful or conflicting situations and find effective solutions. Start by teaching them to identify and express emotions. Then, make a list of your kid’s coping skills; remind them frequently and try to teach new skills. It is better to maintain good communication with children’s teachers and friends. Also, encourage children to be more fun and active with others. 

As parents, you need to teach your children coping skills from their childhood. Let’s start to solve it by identifying the coping skills and the importance of teaching them to children. 

Then I discuss solutions for how you teach children coping skills and focus on simple coping skills activities for children.

So, pay attention carefully and try to apply these things to your kid. Let’s get started!

What are coping skills?

Coping skills are the activities needed in a stressful or conflicting situation to tolerate. It helps to face problems, act upon them, find solutions, and endure the situation.

In a competitive society, our life is full of stressful situations, and to react and mitigate them successfully, coping skills are essential.

They occupy an important place in our mental health, and it’s a major factor needed to live a happy and healthy life. Everyone is benefitted from coping skills, not even the persons with stresses and problems.

Coping skills can be both positive and negative. When people have stress or a problem, they are finding ways to minimize it since they do not need to feel bad. But it’s a matter of whether the coping methods they selected are positive or negative.

Using drugs, drinking alcohol, too much sleeping, unregulated eating, and wasting money are some such unhealthy or harmful coping ways. They are not a solution for the issue, and they create more and more stress.

Exercising, taking a walk, watching a movie, petting a dog, and listening to music are some examples of positive or healthy coping ways. They will help to tolerate and get rid of the stress and find solutions to the matter. 

Therefore, the difference between positive and negative coping skills should be identified to explore how do you teach children coping skills. You need to follow only healthy and positive coping skills and get away from negative coping ways.

Importance of teaching coping skills to the children

Coping skills are needed to deal with stresses and difficult situations of life in an effective way. They are important for everyone in several situations.

Therefore, teaching coping skills to children since their childhood is important, and it will make them well prepared to face the future challenges of life.

Children have to face difficult situations to deal with since their childhood. The first few days of the arrival of a sibling, first days of the nursery, loss of parents’ attention, playtimes with new friends, family matters, etc., are some of the difficult situations that make children stressed.

Coping skills are essential for them to face these situations successfully and tolerate them. In that case, parents must teach coping skills to their kids from childhood.

According to studies, it is proven that children who have improved coping skills since their young ages complete their academics and achieve promising professions as adults. A kid needs to learn coping skills to manage their emotions of sadness, fear, disappointment, anxiety, and boredom.

Coping skills will let them face their feelings, calm themselves down, and cheer up again. It reduces academic matters and makes it easy to concentrate on studies.

And, it will create the home as well as school environment more peaceful since a child unable to cope with difficulties is a disruption to others.

In addition, when children cannot cope with difficult situations, they easily become victims of social traumas such as drug usage, alcohol addiction, sexual harassment, and other crimes.

It is a hazardous situation, and as parents, you have to protect your child from them. The best way is to teach them coping skills and encourage them to face difficult situations successfully.

How do you teach children coping skills?

Now, you know how much your child needs coping skills. Then how do you teach children coping skills? Here are some of the best ways of teaching coping skills to kids.

1. Help to identify and express emotions

The first thing you need to do in teaching children coping skills is letting them name their feelings. Let kids talk about their feelings and the reasons for causing them. You need to discuss them with your child and teach them words to describe their feelings and emotions.

If they are struggling to describe, use a visual chart to identify how they feel. Then you can respond to them with empathy and teach them to cope with those emotions.

The most important thing you need to teach your child is to describe their feelings since it makes emotions more manageable.

2. Remind them to use coping skills they already have

When children are stressed or in a difficult situation, remind them of the tools, they already have to calm down. Taking a break, listening to music, watching cartoons are some of them, and with time, kids learn skills to cope by turning to those tools themselves.

Then, you can teach them to brainstorm new coping strategies and skills according to their interests. Make children feel that you are always there for them and always listen to them.

3. Prepare a list

By discussing with your child, you can prepare a list of coping skills you think are best and what your kid likes to try. This will be an excellent resource for you to teach the child about coping skills he should improve.

Pay attention to the things he loves to do and teach him to use them as a coping skill in difficult situations. Since they love to do them, they will remember to use those skills in stressful times.

4. Try new skills

When the child is calm and relaxed, try out new coping skills with him. Try to use the things he likes and practice them more than once.

Then see whether they work or not. These new skills will help broaden the scope of your child’s coping skills, and when the scope is broad, it is easy for your child to find out the best coping skill for the relevant situation.

5. Maintain good communication with school

It is better to discuss with your child’s teacher how you teach children coping skills. By observing the child’s behaviors, teachers may have new ideas on coping skills suited for your child.

Discuss them with the teacher and let her know about the facts you discovered from your child and make them aware. Then the teacher will look at the child at school with an open mind and help him engage in coping activities.

6. Encourage the kid to engage in fun activities

To make the kid easier to cope with, encourage him to engage in fun activities more and relax his mind. Use his entertaining activities as a coping skill and teach him to use them simply and effectively.

Best coping skills activities for children

While focusing on how do you teach children coping skills, the best way is to practice coping skills activities. Find out best and easy coping skills activities which they can engage on their own whenever they face a difficult situation.

Then, practice them and teach children to use them when they are stressed or in difficulty. It will support them to mitigate stresses and face challenges successfully.

By observing the things your child is interested in, you will be able to find a lot of coping skills activities. Make a list and experiment with them to find out which will suit your kid more effectively.

Here are some coping skills activities you can teach your children to practice in a difficult situation.

• Listening to music
• Talk with others
• Watching cartoons
• Reading a comic book
• Observing wildlife
• Do a daily emotions check-in
• Coloring and drawing
• Try mindful breathing
• Practice Yoga
• Go for a walk
• Read inspirational affirmations
• Do daily exercises
• Create DIY crafts
• Photography
• Spend time outside
• Eat sweets such as chocolates, cookies, ice cream
• Blow bubbles
• Make a stress ball and squeeze in tensions
• Do games such as bingo, dominoes

While studying ‘how do you teach children coping skills, pay attention to the above activities and choose the best activities that will work for your child and help them practice.

Conclusion – how do you teach children coping skills?

So, now you have a clear idea of coping skills, their importance, how you teach children coping skills, and the activities that can be used as coping skills. The most crucial fact here is identifying the stress and tension of your child and the reasons caused for it.

You need to make time for your kid more than you spend now and be a good friend to him so that he can discuss anything. Then encourage him to face and endure difficult situations successfully and teach coping skills. How do you teach children coping skills is a significant concern for his present life and impacts his future as well.

Therefore, practice coping activities with your child will be a good investment for his future since a person with coping skills has an excellent chance to achieve success in the professional world.

Thank you for reading! If you find this article useful, stay tuned with Edu Nursery for more valuable content.