Teaching Students Adaptability In and Out of the Classroom

The current lockdown has forced families across the United States to change their schedules drastically, and this includes their children. As summer ends, many parents throughout the country are wondering what the school year will look like for their kids. While it may seem overwhelming to upend your family’s regular schedule completely, there is a distinct opportunity amid the current chaos to teach your children the value of adaptability.

Why Is Adaptability an Important Skill?

Kids are inherently resilient, and most are good at handling changes to their schedules. However, this kind of transition may be easier for some than others. Now parents now have more time to spend at home with their children and are more active participants in their education. It’s a great time to start building adaptability as a practical skill. Regardless of how the current lockdown situation unfolds, the world is ultimately a vast place full of continually changing experiences. Therefore kids need to learn the skills required to navigate this ever-changing world successfully. Encourage your children to evolve their resiliency and become more adaptable in the face of change. This ultimately sets them up for success. Your children have likely already needed to adapt in dramatic ways over the last year. Learning how to shift gears and overcome new, uncertain challenges is a skill that will serve them well into adulthood. It’s now up to parents and teachers to encourage adaptability at younger ages. Kids will develop the skills they need to navigate the world as young adults.

Teaching Adaptability to Your Kids

There are three main types of adaptability. It’s vital to foster each type within children at young ages so they can enhance and develop these skills more fluently over time:

Behavioral Adaptability

This helps children adjust their actions in the face of changing circumstances. A child with high behavioral adaptability will automatically know how to change their behavior when things change. This includes shifting gears from playing videogames with friends to paying attention to a class discussion online.

Cognitive Adaptability

This allows kids to shift their focus more easily to different types of tasks. For example, children need a very different mindset for tackling a math exam than solving a visual puzzle, and moving from one lesson to another quickly can be a challenge at first.

Emotional Adaptability

This ultimately boils down to minimizing disappointment and maximizing enjoyment. When a child is confronted with a task that doesn’t appear to be very fun or enjoyable, this can put them in a negative mindset that ultimately hampers the experience. Encouraging children to learn how to adjust their emotional responses and seek the positive side of new challenges finally builds emotional resiliency and adaptability. It will eventually help them cope with more substantial emotional situations as adults.

We may live in challenging and uncertain times, but current events also offer the opportunity for children to learn and grow in new and exciting ways. Adaptability is a valuable skill to possess, and parents should do everything they can to find teachable moments that foster adaptability in their children.

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