When working with children who struggle to emotionally regulate, I notice that each of these children has one thing in common: There is someone in their circle who they view as a role model who also struggles to emotionally regulate.

Parents spend a great deal of time and money making elaborate plans for their children's summer vacations. Day camps, sleep away camps, enrichment classes, social skills groups... you name it. For many kids, every single day of summer is planned down to the last minute. For working parents, summers may present child care challenges and perhaps this is the driving force behind this growing trend of summer programming.

When a child is anxious, most adults instinctively move into problem-solving mode. The urge is to fix it, reduce it, or protect the child from the discomfort. That instinct makes sense, and it comes from care! At the same time, anxiety rarely responds well to being rushed or pushed away. In many cases, the more pressure there is to make it stop, the more it tends to hold on.

Whether you are a parent, teacher, therapist, friend of a friend, or a curious cat, you may have experienced the struggle of making task completion less… boring. After all, things take time, and it can be demoralizing to start from the bottom of the mountain when the peak is so high it disappears between the clouds, especially for individuals living with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from challenges, adapt to adversity, and keep moving forward despite setbacks. As parents or caretakers, we often want to “fix” problems for our kids. It can be so tempting to see a problem and solve it for the ones we love.