I remember when, purely out of exhaustion and frustration, I told my eldest kid, who was about seven at the time (and super loud), to “CAN IT.”

Not my finest parenting moment. (But honestly….there’s been SOOOO many….)

Then, for the next few weeks, my four-year-old repeatedly told me to “CAN IT” every time I asked her to do anything at all.

Put your shoes on.

Can it.

Brush your teeth.

Can it.

Please stop licking the window.

Can it.

And there it was: a tiny, brutally honest reminder that the way we show up under pressure does not stay contained inside us. It leaks out. It lands on other people. Sometimes it even comes back at us in the voice of a preschooler with excellent timing.

Pushing through, head down, is not resilience.

The afternoon session I facilitated at the Manitoba Child Care Association conference was called Pressure, Passion and Presence: Resilience Tools for Educators and Leaders, and I cannot think of a more fitting audience for a conversation about what resilience actually means.

Early childhood educators and their leaders do deeply meaningful work. They support children, communicate with families, manage big emotions, navigate expectations and regulations, move through constant transitions, and respond to the thousand tiny moments that make up a day.

They are expected to be patient, calm, creative, responsive, organized, compassionate, and somehow also hydrated (which feels like a ridiculous requirement when you factor in all the bathroom logistics.)

So when we talk about resilience in this kind of work, we have to be careful not to turn it into another expectation people have to perform.

Resilience is not pretending everything is fine.

It is not pushing through until your body files a formal complaint.

Resilience is adaptability.

It is the capacity to stay flexible in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours when life gets disruptive or pressure becomes prolonged. It is the ability to acknowledge that something is hard while still recognizing that we have choices, resources, strengths, and the ability to take one steady step forward.

That kind of resilience matters deeply in child care and education because the work is relational.

Children do not only learn from what adults say. They learn from how adults show up. They learn from how we repair, regulate, handle frustration, respond to disappointment, and move through the moments when things do not go according to plan.

The same is true for leaders of any team.

Leaders set the tone for what becomes normal in a workplace. When leaders model flexibility, boundaries, reflection, accountability, and self-compassion, they create more permission for others to be human too. That does not make the work easy, but it can make the work more sustainable.

One of the biggest reminders from this session was that resilience is not built only in big, heroic moments. It is built in the small practices we return to again and again.

The pause before reacting, and the breath that helps us reset.

The boundary that protects our energy.

The more accurate thought that interrupts the spiral.

The moment of self-compassion that softens the inner attack.

The choice to ask for support instead of silently white-knuckling it.

Those small practices matter because the goal is not to become unshakeable.

The goal is to become more recoverable.

To care deeply without disappearing inside the work.

And to every educator and leader doing this meaningful, demanding, deeply human work: what you do matters.

And so do you.