‘When Something's Hard, You Keep Going No Matter What’: School-Aged Children's Understanding and Experiences of Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

School-aged children were profoundly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the existing research on children within health contexts is drawn from the perspectives of adults in their lives, but few studies have been conducted with children themselves. Existing literature fails to address how school-aged children navigated the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and how these experiences, as expressed via their own voices, fostered and/or foiled their resilience. To that end, the purpose of this paper is to explore a first-hand account of how school-aged children (aged 7–10 years) understood and experienced resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada. Data were collected through online, semi-structured interviews with children ( n = 27) using child-centred, arts-informed interview methodologies tailored to online environments. Most children described resilience as a personal resource, describing an inner strength that allowed them to ensure. Children also identified time spent with family and friends and rapidly changing educational environments as environmental factors central to their resilience. Findings from this study highlight the utility of including children's voices in research; young children were capable of effectively communicating insights into their lived experiences, and the information they shared lends implications that should inform policy and practice. Public health priority setting should include considerations of equitable access to high-quality technology for fostering connection among children and ensuring adequate access to education to better promote children's resilience in future public health crises.