Whether it is going to school for the first time, making new friends or even going to school camp children, like adults, often experience difficulties that they need to overcome.

When children overcome problems and deal with some unpleasant situations that learn they are capable, which is the basis of self-esteem. When parents protect children from difficulties or solve their problems for them they rob children of opportunities to learn about themselves. They also place their children at risk as they need to deal with some of life's smaller curve balls to build a reserve of experiences to draw on as adolescents and adults.

Resilient kids look back and draw on the skills and understandings they have developed in the past to help them deal with present challenges. For instance, a sixteen year old recently revealed how her time spent on a challenging twelve day adventure school camp helped her overcome the homesickness she experienced on a six month student exchange. She remembered that on the first day of her school camp that she didn't think she could make it - but she did. She experienced those same doubts early in her exchange but she knew just as she had pulled through her camp she would do so again, but this time in more difficult circumstances. She was drawing on the same resources.

The attitude and approach of parents and teachers will determine how successfully children and young people meet and overcome many of the obstacles and hurdles they meet. The following five step positive approach will help your children overcome many of the difficulties they meet and also develop their resilience.

• Frame the difficulty as a challenge rather than a problem. Even use the term challenge when speaking about the issue. "Going to school camp can be a challenge but I think you have what it takes to get through it." Kids take their cues about how they view the world and events primarily from parents so if you see problems everywhere then it would take an innately optimistic child to see them over-wise. Your attitude is catching!
  
• Help children develop the skills and mechanisms to cope with their difficulties. Talk them through challenging situations and give them ideas to help them cope. You may even rehearse some skills or the language that they may need in certain circumstances.
  
• Show confidence in children's abilities to overcome difficulties that they meet. If you think that a child can't do something then you are probably correct. Children generally meet their parents' expectations whether they are positive or negative.
  
• Give your child the opportunity to deal with the problem in their own way. Don't keep checking up on them. For instance, one parent who was unsure if her son could cope with being away on a three day camp found excuses to visit her child twice. The sub-text to this type of monitoring is that she didn't think her child could cope.
  
• Praise them for their success (or partial success) in getting through the difficult circumstances and let them know that if they were successful before they will also be able to cope with similar difficulties in the future. It may also be useful to deconstruct the event with older children. "What did you do to help you get over your fears when you spoke in front of the school?"
  

  Our essential task as parents is to empower our children with the attitude and skills to become independent adults. This can be at odds with the strong protective instinct that we have as parents. But our attitude to children and difficulties they meet can either sabotage their attempts or help them be successful.