Emotional Resilience as a Safeguard

Building Emotional Resilience to Protect Against Exploitation and Harmful Gender Expectations

In today’s world, where children and young people face rising risks both online and offline, emotional resilience is more than a personal strength, it’s a vital form of protection.

Children with stronger emotional resilience are better equipped to recognise, resist, and report manipulation, coercion, and harmful social influences. Whether it’s pressure from peers, predatory grooming, or toxic online messaging, resilience gives children the tools to think critically, stay grounded in their values, and seek help when something feels wrong.

As part of our work supporting schools, we regularly listen to children through tools like the Emotional Resilience Questionnaire (ERQ) and the Gender Expectations Questionnaire (GEQ). These help schools gain deeper insight into how pupils are feeling, the pressures they’re facing, and where support may be most needed. The patterns we see emerging through this work reflect just how early these challenges begin, and how vital it is to address them before they escalate.

Key emotional skills like self-awareness, confidence, boundary-setting, emotional regulation, and the ability to ask for support play a major role in helping children stay safe. When these skills are nurtured early, before a child is in crisis, they provide a kind of emotional armour, helping children not only recover from difficulty, but avoid some of the most harmful paths altogether.

Among the many pressures children face, harmful gender expectations have become increasingly prominent, promoting narrow ideas of how boys and girls “should” behave and making some children more vulnerable to exploitation.

In this newsletter, we explore how emotional resilience can help children push back against these pressures and stay safer in a world that can sometimes feel overwhelming or unkind.

Types of Child Exploitation

Child exploitation takes many forms, but at its core, it involves the manipulation or coercion of a child for someone else’s gain, often at the expense of the child’s well-being, safety, and development. While some forms of exploitation are widely recognised, others are more subtle or disguised as “normal” social behaviour, making them harder to detect and resist without support and education.

Sexual Exploitation

This includes grooming, coercion into sexual activity, or the sharing of sexual images. Exploiters often use emotional manipulation, peer pressure, or promises of affection or status to gain control over a child. Children who are isolated or struggling with their identity are especially vulnerable.

Criminal Exploitation

This involves pressuring or forcing a child to engage in illegal activity, such as drug running in county lines operations, theft, or violence,  often through manipulation, threats, or promises of protection. Children may feel they have no choice or may not realise they’re being exploited until they’re already caught up in it.

Emotional and Psychological Exploitation

Sometimes, a child’s emotions and trust are manipulated to serve the needs of others. This can include controlling friendships, online harassment, or gaslighting by adults or peers. The damage may be less visible but can be long-lasting, affecting how children see themselves and relate to others.

Ideological Exploitation

Children can also be targeted by individuals or groups seeking to manipulate their beliefs, sometimes through radicalisation or by promoting extremist views. These exploiters often prey on children’s need for belonging, identity, or meaning.

Enforcing Harmful Gender Expectations

Harmful gender expectations are nothing new. For generations, children have grown up surrounded by ideas about how boys and girls are “supposed” to behave, whether that’s being strong and unemotional, or quiet and pleasing. But in today’s world, these expectations are being reinforced and distorted by a growing number of toxic influences, many of which children are exposed to from a very young age.

With 24-hour access to online content, children are frequently targeted by influencers, media, and peer culture that promote rigid ideals of masculinity, femininity, and success. These messages can pressure children to hide their feelings, take risks to prove themselves, or stay silent when something feels wrong. For some, failing to meet these expectations leads to deep insecurity, isolation, or a loss of identity, all of which make them more vulnerable to exploitation.

When gender expectations are used to control or manipulate children, or when they prevent children from seeking help or expressing themselves safely, they become a form of exploitation in themselves. Helping children develop the emotional resilience to question these pressures, understand their feelings, and hold onto their sense of self is essential in keeping them safe.

What Makes Children Vulnerable

Children become vulnerable to exploitation for many different reasons, and often it’s not because of one single factor, but a combination of emotional, social, and situational pressures. These vulnerabilities can affect any child, regardless of background, and are often hidden beneath the surface.

One key factor is emotional instability. Children who struggle to regulate their emotions or who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, or anger may be more likely to act impulsively or seek comfort in unsafe places. A lack of self-awareness or low confidence can make it harder for them to recognise when a situation or relationship is unhealthy.

Isolation is another major risk. Children who feel lonely, disconnected, or misunderstood may be more susceptible to attention from people who do not have their best interests at heart. Exploiters often look for those who seem unsupported, knowing they are less likely to speak out or seek help.

Children are also vulnerable when they face identity struggles or peer pressure. This is especially true during the primary and early secondary years, when they are figuring out who they are and how they fit in. If they are made to feel different, not good enough, or unaccepted, they may become desperate for approval, even at the cost of their safety.

The rise of online culture has added new layers to this. Children are now navigating a digital world that never switches off, filled with carefully curated images, influencers promoting extreme ideals, and messages that reward appearance, popularity, or bravado over emotional honesty and individuality.

When these vulnerabilities go unrecognised or unsupported, children can be drawn into relationships, activities, or environments that harm them, even when they don’t realise they are being exploited.

How Emotional Resilience Helps

Emotional resilience isn’t just about helping children cope after something has gone wrong — it’s also about giving them the tools to recognise risk, resist harmful influences, and reach out for help before they’re in danger. It strengthens a child’s inner foundation so they can make safer choices, trust their instincts, and stand firm when something doesn’t feel right.

When a child has emotional resilience, they are more likely to:

• Recognise unhealthy situations by being aware of their feelings and understanding what respectful, safe relationships look like.
  
  
• Set boundaries and assert themselves when they feel pressured or uncomfortable, even if they don’t fully understand why.
  
  
• Think critically about messages they receive — whether online, in friendships, or from adults — and ask themselves, “Is this right for me?”
  
  
• Manage their emotions when they feel afraid, angry, or confused, rather than reacting impulsively or withdrawing completely.
  
  
• Ask for help from trusted adults, because they know that doing so isn’t a weakness, but a strength.
  
  

These skills can help prevent exploitation by reducing the power manipulators have over a child’s emotions and sense of self. Whether the threat is online grooming, peer coercion, or rigid gender pressures, children with resilience are more likely to see warning signs and less likely to rely on dangerous sources of validation.

Emotional resilience also plays a vital role in recovery. When children do experience harm, having a foundation of self-belief and emotional support makes it easier to process what’s happened, rebuild confidence, and move forward with hope

The Case for Early Intervention

The skills that make up emotional resilience — like self-awareness, emotional regulation, confidence, and boundary-setting — don’t develop overnight. They need time, space, and guidance to grow. That’s why it’s so important to begin building these skills early, long before children reach adolescence or face serious risks.

Many of the pressures and vulnerabilities children experience begin in primary school. This is when they start to form their sense of identity, compare themselves to others, and navigate more complex friendships and social expectations. It’s also when they’re increasingly exposed to online content, often without the emotional maturity to make sense of what they see.

Yet, emotional resilience is rarely taught in a structured way during these formative years. Academic learning is prioritised, while emotional development is often left to chance — despite the fact that a child’s ability to thrive socially, emotionally, and academically depends on having a strong emotional foundation.

Teaching emotional resilience before children need it is key. By the time a child is facing manipulation, pressure, or exploitation, it may be too late to start building the skills they need to respond safely. Early intervention is about prevention, not reaction — giving every child the tools to recognise risks, make thoughtful decisions, and hold onto a sense of self-worth even in the face of adversity.

This doesn’t mean adding another subject to the timetable. It means embedding resilience-building into everyday school life — through PSHE lessons, classroom culture, peer relationships, and staff training. It means ensuring that every child, not just those already showing signs of difficulty, is given the opportunity to grow in confidence, awareness, and emotional strength.

In Summary: Building Resilience to Protect and Empower

Children today are growing up in a world where emotional challenges and external pressures arrive earlier and more intensely than ever before. From the risk of grooming and manipulation to the subtle but corrosive effects of harmful gender expectations, exploitation can take many forms, and often hides in plain sight.

Emotional resilience gives children a vital layer of protection. It helps them recognise unhealthy situations, set boundaries, think critically, and seek help when they need it. These skills aren’t just helpful after harm has occurred, they’re essential in preventing harm in the first place.

Understanding what makes children vulnerable, and responding early by embedding resilience into the culture of our schools, is one of the most powerful things we can do. It gives children not just the tools to survive difficulty, but the belief that they have the strength to overcome it.

Whether you're already taking steps to build resilience in your school, or just beginning the journey, the insight gained from listening to pupils, especially at the primary stage, can be transformative.

Tools to Support Your School

If you're a primary school looking to better understand your pupils’ emotional resilience or their attitudes to and experiences of gender expectations, we offer two practical, engaging tools:

• The Emotional Resilience Questionnaire (ERQ)
  
  
• The Gender Expectations Questionnaire (GEQ)
  
  

Both are designed for younger children and provide comprehensive, actionable reports at school, year, and class level. Each report includes tailored advice and recommendations based on your pupils’ results, helping you focus support where it’s needed most.

If you'd like to learn more or see a sample report, we’d love to hear from you.

Resources and Further Reading

To support the ideas shared in this newsletter, here are some useful reports and guides you may find helpful:

On Emotional Resilience and Early Intervention

• Resilience Guide for Parents and Teachers – American Psychological Association
  https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience/guide-parents-teachers
  
  
• Improving Social and Emotional Learning in Primary Schools – Early Intervention Foundation
  https://www.eif.org.uk/files/pdf/improving-social-and-emotional-learning-in-primary-schools.pdf
  
  
• Promoting Emotional Health and Resilience in Primary Schools – WCPP Report
  https://www.wcpp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/PPIW-Report-Promoting-Emotional-Health-Well-being-and-Resilience-in-Primary-Schools-Final.pdf
  
  
  

On Child Exploitation and Harmful Influences

• Child Exploitation Overview – The Children's Society
  https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/lookcloser
  
  
• Toxic Masculinity and Gender Roles – The Children's Society
  https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/blogs/how-toxic-masculinity-affects-young-people
  
  
• Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood – The Fawcett Society
  https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/gender-stereotypes-in-early-childhood-a-literature-review
  

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