Understanding Why Self-Efficacy is Critical for Raising Resilient Children
Self-efficacy is defined by Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman as “the belief that one has mastery over the events of one’s life and can meet challenges as they come up.” To raise a child with high self-efficacy, you much continuously take them through the process of overcoming new challenges. With each new challenge a child overcomes, their self-efficacy grows.
Self-efficacy is not only a critical factor in emotional intelligence, it’s also a critical factor for resilience. If you want to raise resilient children, then you must ensure your children have self-efficacy.
At the surface level, self-efficacy is simply about belief. Believing in yourself, believing that you can continuously improve abilities, and believing you can overcome challenges. Certainly, having this belief system is a big part of having self-efficacy. However, when you look deeper there’s more to it.
The link between self-efficacy and resilience is more than surface deep. Specifically because having belief in yourself drives one’s ability to bounce back from failure. In essence, successfully bouncing back from failure is exactly what resilience is all about.
When you raise your child to have confidence that they can bounce back from failure, they don’t fear failure. In addition, the child will focus more on process and less on outcome. In the long run, this means your child will not only be happier on average from day to day, your child will also be more positive and hopeful about the future.
To conclude, self-efficacy is a character trait parents must be intentional about fostering in their children. Without it, not only will a child be less resilient, the child will likely be risk averse and lack confidence.