Kate Lund on Helping Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports, and Life

Kate Lund talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Bounce: Help Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports and Life.


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“Focus on the relationship with the child.” ~Kate Lund

Kate is a mother, clinical psychologist and university instructor who is interested in resiliency and wrote Bounce from the perspective as a mother and university instructor, and based on her own childhood experiences with hydrocephalus. Kate noted that resiliency is particularly important where children today are concerned, as they face a lot of challenges. The book came out of her years of experience as a clinical psychologist and with her own curiosity about resiliency and is designed to be an easy read for parents, teachers and coaches. One of the times that she recalls was when she was working in Shriners Burn Hospital in Boston, where she encountered children who had serious burn injuries, children who needed a great deal of resilience in their lives after receiving their injuries.

Kate notes that resiliency is important mainly because children will face challenges, and the ability to get up after being knocked down by a challenge enables them to move on and eventually realize their potential, rather than getting stuck. She also remarks that resiliency varies from child to child, with some being naturally more resilient than others, and notes that it is important to help less resilient children shift their perspective to one which enables greater resiliency.

Kate remarks that children can become more resilient as they learn and grow, where the environment and the people around them can help out. She points out that helping a child manage their emotions and, thus, their frustrations, which will keep those children from shutting down. Kate remarks that kids learn in different ways and at a different pace, and that separating their classroom performance from how they feel about themselves enables greater resiliency in children.

The pillars of resilience that Kate notes in the book are

· the ability to tolerate frustration and manage emotions;
· navigate friendships and social pressures;
· sustain focus and attention;
· develop courage;
· build motivation;
· find confidence; and
· create optimism.

Kate believes that building the skills espoused by these pillar will create more resilient children. She notes that the model she uses is based on her experience and analysis, as well as on the research done on resilience, and that these pillars are the core elements of resilience. She gave an example of a situation where navigating friendship and social pressure was the concern, remarking that, by helping a child do so, they can be taught skills which would enhance their confidence and emotional intelligence, what their own strengths and values are and accept and understand individual differences in others.

Kate notes that, at the end of each chapter, are bullet points – action steps – that parents and teachers can do to help foster resilience in children. Teachers and parents, for example, can help by creating a positive, focused state of mind and identifying the way by which a child learns, as different children learn in different ways. Parents also need to be connected with their child’s strengths, passions and aptitudes, and then focus on these in daily life.

Purchase from Amazon: Bounce: Help Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports and Life by Kate Lund