Raising our Children to be Resilient

Raising Our Children to be Resilient

A Guide to Helping Children Cope with Life in a Complex World

by Linda Goldman MS, LCPC

Today’s children cannot avoid a constant stream of images and accounts of frightening events. Wars, terrorist

attacks, school shootings and the threat of nuclear and biological attacks are all over the radio, television and Internet.

While not all of these dangers are unique to the twenty-first century, the constant presence of media images and reports

exposes children to suffering and trauma in a way not experienced by earlier generations. Moreover, our increasingly fastpasted

and fragmented lifestyles inevitably subject children to confusing and destabilizing events such as divorce,

abandonment and change of household. Additionally, today’s children must adapt to harsher and more dangerous forms of

bullying and abuse by their peers and struggle to understand issues of sexual and gender identification.

In this timely and much-needed book, Linda Goldman addresses the many frightening events that impact our

children by providing the reader with a seamless mixture of theory and practice garnered from her extensive experience in

the field. Raising Our Children to Be Resilient includes trauma resolution techniques and case studies, discussions of the

respective roles played by parents, teachers and the larger community as well as additional resources for those in a

position to help children who have been traumatized. The goal of Raising Our Children to Be Resilient is exactly what its title

promises: to help children through their pain and confusion and guide them into a flexible and compassionate adulthood.

RAISING OUR CHILDREN TO BE RESILIENT:

A GUIDE TO HELPING CHILDREN COPE WITH TRAUMA IN TODAY’S WORLD

Linda Goldman MS, LCPC

* Provides techniques and resources for helping and

treating grieving, traumatized, and at-risk youth.

* Gives professionals and parents both an understanding

of children’s fears and practical methods to help children

become resilient adults.

* Organizes a diverse range of bereavement, trauma and

other violence issues into a coherent cocern about the welfare

of children.

Linda Goldman, MS, LCPC, Certified Grief Therapist and Grief

Educator is certified by the Association for Death Education and

Counseling (ADEC) as a grief therapist and educator, and has

worked as a teacher and counselor in the Baltimore County school

system for almost twenty years. Currently in private practice working

with children, adolescents, women with potential loss, and grieving

adults, Mrs. Goldman also finds time to teach on the faculty of the

Graduate Program of Counseling at Johns Hopkins University and

at the University of Maryland School of Social Work/Advanced

Certification Program for Children and Adolescents. She has worked

as a consultant for the National Head Start Program and National

Geographic, and has served on the board of ADEC, and currently

sits on the advisory board of SPEAK, Suicide Prevention Education

Awareness for Kids. She has appeared on the Diane Rehms show

to discuss children and grief, and been named by Washington

Magazine as one of the top therapists in the MD, VA, DC area in

1998 and again in 2001, and is the recipient of the ADEC Clinical

Practice Award for 2003.

Routledge

December: 7 x 10: 376 pp

153 Half Tones, 77 Line Drawings

Pb: 0415949068: $29.95/V

Counseling/ Psychotherapy/ Trauma & Stress

“Goldman acknowledges that a child’s world can sometimes be scary, even terrifying.

[This book] offers tools, techniques, activities, and advice so that parents, teachers,

mental health professionals, and other caring adults can build resilience in children

so that they can adapt to this scary world.”

- from the foreword by Kenneth J. Doka, Ph.D., Professor,

The College of New Rochelle; Senior Consultant,

The Hospice Foundation of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: Grief and Trauma: The Impact on Our Children

Chapter 1: Living In a Complex World

Chapter 2: Traumatic Events in a Complex World

Chapter 3: Bullying and Victimization: A Deadly Disease and Invisible Killer

Chapter 4: School Violence - No Place to Feel Safe

Part II: Working With Kids and Trauma: Home, School, Community

Chapter 5: Trauma Resolution Techniques: Helping Children Succeed

Chapter 6: School Systems Respond to Crisis

Part III: Coming Together to Create Change

Chapter 7: Parenting through a Crisis/ Preparing for the Future

Chapter 8: Educators at Work: Meeting the Challenge of Traumatic Events

Chapter 9: Community Action: From Fear to Freedom

Chapter 10: Creating Resilient Children

Part IV: Resources and Information: Growing Strong Spirits

Chapter 11: National Resources That Help

Chapter 12: Annotated Bibliography

Printed in the U.S. 09/04 61000

Taylor & Francis offers a 90-day approval period to academics. The book will be

accompanied by an invoice dated 90 days from the time we process your order. If you

adopt 10 or more copies of the title for your course, the examination copy is yours free.

Return the invoice with the course information and purchase order number provided

by your bookstore. If you wish to keep the book, but do not wish to adopt it, please pay

the amount shown on the invoice, or return the book to us and the invoice will be

canceled. To receive an examination copy please send your request to the following

address: Taylor & Francis, Dept. DU, 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

Please allow up to four weeks for delivery.

U.S. CUSTOMERS call toll-free

1-800-634-7064

Customer Service: Taylor & Francis

10650 Toebben Drive

Independence, KY 41051

FAX: 1-800-248-4724

HELPFUL INFORMATION HELPFUL ARTICLES BOOKS, CD's,VIDEOS HELPFUL LINKS
SEMINARS ABOUT LINDA GOLDMAN eMAIL LINDA GOLDMAN

Children entering this new millennium are faced with life issues that were unspeakable to us growing up as children. Death related tragedies such as suicide, homicide, and AIDS, and non-death related traumas such as divorce and separation, foster care and abandonment, bullying and terrorism, and abuse and violence have left our children sitting alone in their homes, unfocused and unmotivated in their classrooms, and terrorized in their
communities. They are overwhelmed with their feelings and distracted by their thoughts.

Survivorship of these traumas creates for any child a loss of their assumptive world of safety, protection, and predictability. The role of the media as a surrogate communal parent and extended family further creates
this same traumatic loss of this assumptive world for many if not most of our children.

Children naturally assume their world will be filled with safety, kindness, and meaning as they attempt to answer the universal questions of who am I and why am I here. All too often these qualities seem to disappears into a nightmarish universe of randomness, isolation, and unpredictability. This leaves many of todayšs young people immersed in a new assumption: There is no future. There is no safety. There is no connectedness or meaning to my life. By joining together as a global grief team, caring adults can co-create an assumptive world that again provides a childšs birthright to presume love, generosity, and value will be integral parts of their lives.

We are raising a segment of our youth that are numbed, disconnected from their hearts, their minds, and their consciousnesses, and choosing all to easily, other alternatives such as drugs and alcohol, crime and violence as ways of coping with the loss of their assumptive world. In yesterdayšs world we may have protected ourselves from trauma by having fire drills in our schools. In todayšs world our kids protect themselves from danger in the schools by having gun-fire drills. Too many of todayšs school children are grieving children. So many of our boys and girls are born into a world of grief and loss issues that live inside their homes and lay waiting for them outside their doorsteps, on their streets, schoolyards, and classrooms. Increasingly, children are traumatized by prevailing social and societal loss issues in their families, their schools, their nation, and their world.

Text adapted with permission from Life and Loss: A Guide to Help Grievng Children, Breaking the Silence: A Guide To Help Children With Complicated Grief: Suicide, Homicide, AIDS, Violence, and Abuse and Helping The Grieving Child in the School Healing Magazine (Kidspeace)and Growing Up Fast (NES).
This information can not be reproduced without acknowledging source.