Remember 4 S’s for Better Resilience
We want our children to build resilience by handling challenges, but sometimes they need help. So what can we do? We can scaffold using the Four S Framework.
In education, scaffolding refers to supports that allow students to move gradually toward their goal. As students become more independent, the supports are gradually moved away. Consider a teacher preparing their students to complete long-term projects. The first project might last only three days. The teacher might break down the assignment, providing the students with suggestions for what might be a good goal to finish each night. The teacher might help them consider other commitments they have during that time period. He might provide them with a graphic organizer or outline to help them organize their thoughts. For the next project, he might make the assignment longer and ask his students to create their own outline, breaking down the assignment into groups. He might make the following assignment still longer and ask the students to develop an outline and schedule individually. Finally, he might assign a long-term project and expect his students to do it all on their own.
Scaffolding works just as effectively outside the classroom and can be used by parents to teach their children life skills. As parents, it’s our job to consider what our children will need and how their sense of self-worth helps them prepare for the future. If we don’t want our children to live with us for the rest of our lives, we need to prepare our children to become independent and self-reliant. That means that if our kids can do something on their own, we need to let them. (Think about the grasshopper with his arms in the air.) If they can’t do it themselves, we need to create a framework to help them learn (keep in mind that the ant works best with a map) and give them just enough support to help them, gradually pulling back those supports until they can do it on their own. Remember, the goal is independence.
The Four Ss is a framework that we can use as a scaffold to guide our children as they handle challenges. Our resilience is our response to any challenge, good, bad, big or small. Our response to those challenges is guided by the way we think about four Ss: self, situation, supports, and strategies.
Self encompasses all our thoughts about ourselves – our culture, strengths, weaknesses, values, hopes, dreams, fears, motivations, and so on –all the different aspects of our identity.
Situation is how we think about a challenge–our ability to put it into perspective and break it down into smaller action steps.
Supports are the people and resources (e.g. books, YouTube, internet search) we go to help us handle a challenge.
Strategies are the actions we take to navigate the challenge successfully. Do we only have one strategy and then give up? Do we know when our current strategy is not working, and do we have an alternative strategy to use?
The good news is, we can use these four Ss as a framework to prepare for, handle, and reflect on any challenge. When we do that, we can start to think in ways that make us more resilient.
As parents and educators, we can use those four Ss to frame questions that help guide our children through challenges:
Is your strategy working? Do you have another?
What supports can you use?
What strengths do you bring to this challenge?
Can you break the challenge down so you can do it step-by-step?
How did your strategies work?
Did you use your supports?
It is so tempting to do things for our children. However, it is even better if we can provide the support they need to learn how to do things for themselves. The Four Ss can help us to do that.
Here are the words to Danni Helps:
Danni the dragonfly flew up to help her friends
Let’s listen closely to the message that she sends
“I know you can do this, you’ve got your tools in place
And we always get much stronger through challenges we face!”
Danni kept supporting and watching them with pride
Even as they struggled, she kept off to the side
She knows self-esteem is not a gift that she can give
But it's something that we earn through the challenges we live.You can listen to Danni Helps anywhere you stream music by clicking here!
(Danni Helps can be found on Album 1)
