Resiliency is often referred to as the resources one uses to cope with difficult times and the ability to bounce back from these hard situations. Triumphing over pain, overcoming challenges, accomplishing through adversity, and developing strength through suffering are familiar descriptions. The American Heritage Dictionary defines resilience as the ability to recover quickly from illness, change or misfortune; buoyancy. As parents, educators, and other caring professionals, we may ask how we can identify, nurture and instill the qualities of adaptability, tolerance, patience and fortitude in our children within their ever-changing environment.

Memories of traumatic events deeply affect the child, as they continually reoccur without warning as if they were a continuous movie on a screen. Even infants and toddlers have the capacity to carry this movie inside their heads and continually replay it when similar instances occur in their lives. The concepts surrounding children and resiliency have become a popular topic in today’s world. We not only identify what characteristics are incorporated into those children who are resilient to adversity, but also explore what qualities parents, educators and professionals can instill and model for children under stress and adversity. Taking resiliency a step further, we may strive to create models for all children, not just for those especially predisposed to be at risk.

Children in the twenty-first century face obstacles and pressures that create stress and tension and grief in their daily lives. Their ability to cope, strategize, and adapt to everyday challenges with a resilient quality breeds success in the present and for the future. We may ask ourselves what qualities give certain children and teens the inner strength to cope successfully with the daily demands of life in a fast paced, media-stimulated, often violent environment where day to day bullying and threats of terrorism are as commonplace as divorce and pressures for good grades and social status.

Parents, educators and other caring professionals can contribute in creating resiliency for the children and teens around them by facilitating their positive adaptation to life adversities. Three important factors contributing to resilient children are:

 

Children are living with adversity, stress and anxiety with outer world pressures and inner expectations placed on them by themselves and others. We may imagine a world where these very children are strong enough, capable enough and fulfilled enough to process their inner and outer experiences in ways that strengthen their self-concept and serve the larger community.

One practical outlook to resiliency is for caring adults to provide interactions and modeling that strengthen a child’s ability to meet challenges with confidence, purpose and compassion. Others are: teaching coping skills, stress management and decision making; and providing ways that young people can share with others, enhance friendships, and become responsible citizens in the community and the world.

Masten (2001) shares the view of many researchers about the special quality that resilient children possess. Resilience appears to be a common phenomenon that results in most cases from the operation of basic human adaptation systems. If those systems are protected and in good working order, development is robust even in the face of severe adversity. If these major systems are impaired, antecedent or consequent to adversity, then the risk for developmental problems is much greater, particularly if the environmental hazards are prolonged. (p.227)

Adults play a powerful role in nurturing a child’s or adolescent’s choice making and processing of problems and in providing the educational setting to allow this processing to unfold and develop with learning that can be used when the next problem arises. Being models that give children the confidence that adults in their life can handle difficult times and can take care of them during these situations is a powerful message.

Why is resiliency important to talk about? How can one use it to help children once it is explained? A major aspect of resiliency may be the feeling that I’m not totally alone against the world. Somehow, somewhere, I’m part of something bigger than me. Regardless of which lens it is viewed through—spirituality, religious, social, community or family resiliency provides and encourages altruistic urges to help others and to make life work.

Signs of a Resilient Child

The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.

—Victor Frankl

Victor Frankl exemplified the human spirit and its struggle to survive and eventually thrive when intolerable situations as a longtime prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp stripped him to a bare existence. In his classic book, Man ’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes the struggle and power of choice, telling us that even the very tiniest, can create freedom and power. Dr. Frankl was asked why he didn’t just kill himself, and he answers the question by explaining his process of weaving slender threads of a broken life into firm patterns of meaning and responsibility. (Allport, preface). For him, the ultimate choice was between life and death, and he chose to live. He demonstrated the triumph of human dignity in holding fast to the images of love and hope and the power of the mind to create that attitude of optimism.

 

Simon was a fifteen-year-old exhibiting adolescent behaviors and sometimes difficulties. Although he had many friends, a loving family and a bright mind, he often felt alone after his brother’s death. Simon would remark over and over that there was nothing good in his life. We would dialogue reality checks to confirm there were positive situations and people all around him, yet he insisted he could see none. The concept of choice in the thoughts one uses was introduced and repeated in our many times together. Even while explaining that negative talk and self-defeating phrases were often unconscious, but their repetition could create the perception that they were true, Simon’s patterns still seemed to continue.

After many discussions about the power of these unproductive messages and the ability to interject positive ones, a casual incident identified a change in understanding. Simon greeted me after school with a smile. Asking how his day had gone, he replied, "good," a response he did not often say. He then proceeded to explain he had decided to be happy and how lucky he was that he learned this at such a young age. The power of choosing our thoughts and the impact of positive messages had become a viable tool for resiliency for Simon.

Methods of Promoting Resilience

Children throughout the planet are learning universal lessons in resiliency from their survivorship of public and private tragedy. From SARS and Tsunami’s to terrorism, war and violence, children can manage not only to survive but also to thrive. Mentors and role models in daily life can inspire them to get through difficult times and achieve goals. When the chaos and confusion around them is transformed into planned action, children can then become a part of a global community of citizens "working toward the betterment of themselves and others"remembering that all of us need to take responsibility for the complex world we live in.

 

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