Welcome to another school year. I hope that the transition back to routines have gone smoothly. As we begin a new school year, please remember that you (parents) and I (classroom teacher) are a team in the growth and development of your precious children. I feel privileged that I am your child’s teacher this year.

Our job as the community of adults surrounding the children we care for is to provide a safe and nurturing environment so children can grow into strong, successful, self-sufficient, resilient members of the community.  One of the ways we can help our children is to be supportive when adversity or challenges come their way and not doing it for them.  It is important to remember that although we don’t want to see our children hurt, if it is a challenge that they can overcome with no harm, we need to let them face it by letting them experience it.  Safety is paramount, and yes, it may be painful as caregivers to watch, but how will children learn if they are not allowed to experience it? Not being able to deal with each challenge will be much worse as the challenges become more difficult, especially as they grow older.  The best way to help your child is allowing your child to “do it themselves” and standby to encourage them. If they need consoling, standby with caring words and help them talk it out. Help your child to see what happened and how they can change things for the next time so not experience the same feeling again.  Making mistakes is a critical part of learning. If we continue to do what we already know over and over again, how is this developing further and stronger? Working out what happened, reflecting back on what went wrong and looking at what can be done differently the next time is where the learning takes place.  If children do not encounter challenges and hiccups along the way, how will they be able to handle something that is more challenging? How will they manage to handle challenges if they have not had an opportunity to work through adversity?  Being able to face the challenge, learn from it, and bounce back stronger is what we want our kids to be.  Building resilience does not happen magically by a wave of a wand. Resilience needs to be nurtured and strengthened through encouragement and guidance. After all, building resilient children who will become stronger adults ready to embrace any situation is our goal as caregivers.