When we first encounter the concept of building resilience in children, it can seem like a full-time job. Your days are already full; you don’t have time to get a degree in resilience! (Just kidding- there isn’t one). Never fear! We can help to make your resilience-building journey as smooth and easy as possible.
One of the simplest ways to begin to build resilience in children is to weave ideas, activities, and conversations into what you are already doing.
For example, in the Wilke household, we sometimes encourage our kids to listen to God in silence during our morning snuggle time (this builds the protective factor of a relationship with Jesus). We’ve structured our yearly vacation to include a physical challenge (to build perseverance, another protective factor). Or we listen to the audio Bible while getting ready in the morning (seeding Truth about who God says He is and who He says they are). We do chores together as a family, building their capacity to attend to activities they may not enjoy but that need to be done (focus, another protective factor).
Do we do these perfectly? Definitely not.
Do our children have perfect resilience? Hah!
But the truth is that this is how resilience is built – tiny practices repeated over time.
It’s not a big program or system that you need to implement along with everything else you already manage. Rather, it’s a way of thinking that weaves a focus on overcoming into the daily conversations and activities that we share with our families and the people we love and serve.
It’s not an overnight fix but rather a long-term journey in the same direction, one step at a time.
Nurturing resilience through stories
It’s likely that you are already, perhaps unknowingly, doing things that build resilience in your children. When you surround them with extended family, good friends, and other people who love them, you are building their social network (a protective factor). When you talk about what your child might want to do and be when they grow up, you are cultivating a future focus (also a protective factor).
One simple way we can incorporate the concept of resilience into our lives is by being thoughtful about the content we consume.
The media, books, news, music,and movies we ingest have an incredible ability to inform our patterns of thought and our ideas of what is possible. We suggest a thoughtful, cautious approach to media and technology, especially for children who have experienced early adversity.
However, books and occasional movies, viewed together as a family, can have the very useful effect of normalizing resilience. They teach us that challenge is common – any good story has lots of it – and that challenge can be overcome.
Well-crafted stories can demonstrate what overcoming can look like in many different circumstances, whether through fictional stories, true events, or biographies of resilient people.
Books and movies for building resilience in children
While every family should thoughtfully select the books and movies that are an appropriate fit for their own children, here are a few suggestions from the CAFO Research Center team for bringing the concept of resilience to life within your family culture. [Save this downloadable resource to reference this collection anytime you need it!]
Picture Books
- Caleb Koala’s Comeback Ride by Nicole Wilke
- It Will Be Okay by Lysa TerKuerst
- Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
- Peter’s First Easter by Walter Wangerin
- Adelina Aviator by Jessica Vana
- Brave Little Camper by Carmen Crowe
- Llama, Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney
- The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
- I am Helen Keller by Brad Meltzer
- Courageous World Changers: 50 True Stories of Daring Women of God by Shirley-Raye Redmond
- Brave Heroes and Bold Defenders: 50 True Stories of Daring Men of God by Shirley-Raye Redmond
- If You Grew Up With Abraham Lincoln by Ann Mcgovern
- Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco
- Ordinary People Change the World series by Brad Meltzer
Fiction Chapter Books
- 10 Boys Who Changed the World by Irene Howat
- The Boxcar Children, Book 1 by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie (Dear America Series) by Kristiana Gregory
- Way of the Warrior Kid by Jocko Willink
- A Time for Courage by Kathryn Lasky
- The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh
- The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh
- The Little House on the Prairie Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- Hatchet book set by Gary Paulsen
- Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson
- Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
- Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille by Russell Freedman
- Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
- Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Chosen by Chaim Potok
- A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
- The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
- The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
Nonfiction & Biographies
- Overcoming: What Scripture and Science Say About Resilience by Drs. Nicole Wilke and Amanda Howard
- With Daring Faith: A Biography of Amy Carmichael by Rebecca Davis
- Eric Liddell: Pure Gold by David McCasland
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
- Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
- Great Inventors and Their Inventions by Frank Bachman
- Resilient by John Eldredge
- Helping Children Succeed by Paul Tough
- Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas
- Joni: An Unforgettable Story by Joni Eareckson Tada
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
Family-friendly movies that demonstrate resilience
- The Karate Kid
- On Our Own
- Facing the Giants
- Wonder
- Rudy
- Finding Nemo
- Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
- Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable
- David Copperfield
- Queen of Katwe
- March of the Penguins
- Young Woman and the Sea
- Charlotte’s Web
Conversations that count (and also build resilience)
The books and movies listed above aren’t just entertainment; they’re windows into the remarkable human capacity to overcome hard things, carefully chosen to nurture that same spirit in our children. Your shared journey toward building resilience can start right where you are, one story, one conversation, one shared moment at a time.
Whether reading a book or watching a movie, parents have a great opportunity to engage children through simple conversations about the story they’ve just encountered. These conversations can be incredibly helpful as children learn to identify and articulate their own feelings around the challenges they observed, while also noticing how characters overcame obstacles.
A few questions that can get the conversation started may include…
- What was your favorite part of the story? Was there a part you didn’t like?
- What were some of the hard things you saw the characters facing?
- How did they handle those challenges? What helped? What didn’t?
- Who was there to help them during their difficult experience(s)?
- Did any of the characters remind you of anyone you know?
- If you went through something like this, what would be helpful for you?
- Who could help you during a difficult time in your life ?
- Is there a Bible verse we know or something we know about God that would have been helpful or comforting to these characters?
In the end, nurturing resilience in children isn’t about adding another item to your parenting to-do list – it’s about being intentional with the moments and materials already woven into your family’s life, even storytimes and movie nights.
-Nicole Wilke, PhD, is a child welfare researcher, missionary, author, and marriage and family therapist dedicated to improving care for vulnerable children and families globally. She currently serves as Director of the Center on Applied Research for Vulnerable Children and Families at CAFO, bridging research and practice to improve faith-based care for vulnerable children and families around the globe.
