All children face adversities in life. A child's individual and family histories and the resources that are available in the community can "tip the scale" to increase the chances of positive outcomes and encourage the development of resilience.
Review the article Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strength the Foundations of Resilience. Then watch these videos from Harvard University's Center for the Developing Child to learn more about resilience in children and their communities:
· What is Resilience? (2015 video, 2 minutes in length, captioned)
· How Resilience is Built (2015 video, 2 minutes in length, captioned)
· The Science of Resilience (2015 video, 2 minutes in length, captioned)
Then post a response to the following:
1. Based on what you learned from the videos and readings explain what the fulcrum represents and how it helps us to understand resilience in children who have experienced toxic stress or trauma.
2. What are some individual (child) and family factors that help determine whether the child moves toward positive outcomes or negative outcomes after facing adversity or trauma?
3. What are some resources that communities and societies need to help improve the resilience of children?
4. What programs or services would you propose in your own community to help build resilience among children? Explain why you believe these services are needed and how they would help.
Please answer these questions according to the videos and article. I also need a reference sheet. Click the blue letter for the article and videos so it can open on a new
owser but if it doesn’t open I have provided you with pdf and the links are below.
https:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqO7YoMsccU
https:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSf7pRpOgu8&t=21s
https:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r8hj72bfGo
Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience
Supportive Relationships and
Active Skill-Building Strengthen
the Foundations of Resilience
WORKING PAPER 1313
MEMBERS
Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D. (Chair)
Director, Center on the Developing
Child, Julius B. Richmond FAMRI
Professor of Child Health and
Development, Harvard T.H. Chan
School of Public Health and Harvard
Graduate School of Education,
Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard
Medical School and Boston
Children’s Hospital
Pat Levitt, Ph.D. (Science Director)
Simms/Mann Chair in Developmental
Neurogenetics, Institute for the
Developing Mind, Children’s Hospital
Los Angeles, W. M. Keck Provost
Professor in Neurogenetics, Keck
School of Medicine, University of
Southern California
Silvia Bunge, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychology
and Helen Wills Neuroscience
Institute, University of California,
Berkeley
Judy L. Cameron, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychiatry and
Obstetrics & Gynecology, Director
of Outreach, School of Medicine,
University of Pittsburgh
Greg J. Duncan, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor, Department
of Education, University of California,
Irvine
Philip A. Fisher, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, University
of Oregon, Senior Scientist, Oregon
Social Learning Cente
Nathan A. Fox, Ph.D.
Distinguished University Professor,
Director, Child Development
Laboratory, University of Maryland,
College Park
Megan R. Gunnar, Ph.D.
Regents Professor and Distinguished
McKnight University Professor,
Institute of Child Development,
University of Minnesota
Takao K. Hensch, Ph.D.
Professor of Molecular and Cellular
Biology, Professor of Neurology,
Director, Conte Center for Basic
Mental Health Research at Harvard
University, Senior Research
Associate in Neurology, Boston
Children’s Hospital
Fernando D. Martinez, M.D.
Regents’ Professor,
Director, Arizona Respiratory Center,
Director, BIO5 Institute and CTSI,
Swift-McNear Professor of Pediatrics,
University of Arizona
Linda C. Mayes, M.D.
Arnold Gesell Professor, Child
Psychiatry, Pediatrics and
Psychology,
Yale Child Study Cente
Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D.
Alfred E. Mirsky Professor,
Head, Harold and Margaret
Milliken Hatch Laboratory of
Neuroendocrinology,
The Rockefeller University
Charles A. Nelson III, Ph.D.
Richard David Scott Chair in
Pediatric Developmental Medicine
Research, Boston Children’s
Hospital, Professor of Pediatrics
and Neuroscience, Harvard
Medical School
About the Authors
The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child is a multidisciplinary, multi-university collaboration designed to
ing the science
of early childhood and early
ain development to bear on public decision-making. Established in 2003, the Council is committed to an
evidence-based approach to building
oad-based public will that transcends political partisanship and recognizes the complementary
esponsibilities of family, community, workplace, and government to promote the well-being of all young children. For more information,
visit www.developingchild.net.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of former Council member W. Thomas Boyce, M.D. and Anat Zaidman, Ph.D. to
the drafting of this paper.
Please note: The content of this paper is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the opinions of
the funders or partners.
Suggested citation: National Scientific Council on the Developing Child XXXXXXXXXXSupportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building
Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience: Working Paper 13. http:
www.developingchild.harvard.edu
© 2015, National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
PARTNERS
FrameWorks Institute
National Governors
Association Center for
Best Practices
National Conference of
State Legislatures
TruePoint Center for Higher
Ambition Leadership
SPONSORS
Alliance for Early Success
Buffett Early Childhood
Fund
Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation
Palix Foundation
The Issue
WWW.DEVELOPINGCHILD.HARVARD.EDU Strengthening the Foundations of Resilience 1
the future prosperity of any society depends on a continuing investment in the healthy
development of the next generation. The well-documented connection between adverse early ex-
periences and a wide range of costly problems, such as lower school achievement and higher rates
of criminal behavior and chronic disease, underscores the extent to which reducing the burdens
of significant adversity on families with young children must be a critical part of that investment.
That said, not all children exposed to stressful circumstances experience detrimental consequenc-
es. A better understanding of why some do well despite serious hardship could inform more effec-
tive policies and programs to provide support for families and help more disadvantaged children
each their full potential.
Decades of research in the behavioral and
social sciences have produced a rich knowledge
ase that explains why some people develop the
adaptive capacities to overcome significant ad-
versity and others do not. Whether the burdens
come from the hardships of poverty, the chal-
lenges of parental substance abuse or serious
mental illness, the stresses of war, the threats of
ecu
ent violence or chronic neglect, or a com-
ination of factors, the single most common
finding is that children who end up doing well
have had at least one stable and committed rela-
tionship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or
other adult. These relationships provide the per-
sonalized responsiveness, scaffolding, and pro-
tection that buffer children from developmental
disruption. They also build key capacities—such
as the ability to plan, monitor and regulate be-
havior, and adapt to changing circumstances—
that enable children to respond to adversity and
to thrive. This combination of supportive rela-
tionships, adaptive skill-building, and positive
experiences constitutes the foundations of what
is commonly called resilience.
Recent discoveries in molecular biology,
genomics, and epigenetics provide remarkable
What Is Resilience?
In the social, behavioral, and biological sciences, the term
esilience is used in a variety of ways and contexts—some-
times as an individual characteristic, sometimes as a process,
and sometimes as an outcome. Despite these differences,
there is a set of common, defining features of resilience that
illustrates how the concept has been used in research and
intervention sciences. These features include the following:
1. The capacity of a dynamic system to adapt success-
fully to distu
ances that threaten its function,
viability, or development.8
2. The ability to avoid deleterious behavioral and phys-
iological changes in response to chronic stress.18
3. A process to harness resources to sustain
well-being.76
4. The capacity to resume positive functioning follow-
ing adversity.77
5. A measure of the degree of vulnerability to shock or
distu
ance.78
6. A person’s ability to adapt successfully to acute
stress, trauma, or more chronic forms of adversity.11
7. The process of adapting well in the face of adversity,
trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources
of stress.79
Whether it is considered an outcome, a process, or a
capacity, the essence of resilience is a positive, adaptive
esponse in the face of significant adversity. It is neither an
immutable trait nor a resource that can be used up. On a
iological level, resilience results in healthy development be-
cause it protects the developing
ain and other organs from
the disruptions produced by excessive activation of stress re-
sponse systems. Stated simply, resilience transforms poten-
tially toxic stress into tolerable stress. In the final analysis,
esilience is rooted in both the physiology of adaptation and
the experiences we provide for children that either promote
or limit its development.
2 Strengthening the Foundations of Resilience WWW.DEVELOPINGCHILD.HARVARD.EDU
NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL ON THE DEVELOPING CHILD
new insights into the underlying causal mecha-
nisms that explain how supportive relationships
uild the capacities to deal with adversity. This
apidly advancing research frontier demon-
strates that resilience is the result of multiple
interactions among protective factors in the
social environment and highly responsive bio-
logical systems. These findings provide an op-
portunity to examine how cu
ent policies and
programs could be enhanced to produce more
favorable life outcomes for disadvantaged
children, both by reducing their exposure to
sources of adversity and by designing better
ways of building their coping skills and adap-
tive capacities.
The answer to this challenge begins with
extensive scientific evidence that the develop-
ment of healthy
ain architecture is influenced
y consistent, “serve and return” interactions
etween young children and their primary
caregivers.1 When these experiences are un-
available or repeatedly disrupted, the body
perceives their absence as a serious threat, and
activates its stress response systems. Although
the immediate effects of the stress response are
protective, its excessive or prolonged activation
produces physiological changes that can have
a wear and tear effect on the developing
ain,
cardiovascular system, immune function, and
metabolic regulatory systems—in short, it be-
comes toxic stress.2,3 In contrast, when respon-
sive interactions with caring adults are provid-
ed or restored, stress response systems return
to their normal baselines, the developing
ain
and other maturing organ systems are pro-
tected from disruption, and children are helped
to develop the coping skills needed to deal with
adversity. The net result of these protective ef-
fects is that what could have been a toxic stress
experience for a child becomes what we call
“tolerable stress.”
One way to understand the development of
esilience is to visualize how protective experi-
ences and adaptive skills both counte
alance
significant adversity and produce positive out-
comes. This can be illustrated through the con-
cept of a balance scale or perhaps a seesaw or
teeter-totter (see box). In this model, resilience
is evident when a child’s health and develop-
ment are tipped in the positive direction, even
when a heavy load of negative factors is stacked
on the other side. Understanding all of the in-
fluences that might tip the scale in the positive
direction is critical to devising more effective
strategies for promoting healthy development in
the face of significant disadvantage.
over the past few decades, there have been
numerous longitudinal studies of children’s de-
velopment under conditions of adversity that
typically lead to toxic stress responses. The
power of this research lies in the compilation
of rich datasets from the same individuals over
an extended period of time, often beginning at
irth or even prenatally and, in some instances,
continuing well into adulthood.
Many of these studies have identified a subset
of children whose life outcomes were remark-
ably positive despite their exposure to a variety
of adverse experiences that typically produce
increased risks for impairments in learning,
ehavior, and both mental and physical health.
Gaining a greater understanding of how and
why these unexpected outcomes happen is help-
ing to build a more robust science of resilience.
This science can stimulate fresh thinking about
how to enhance the life prospects of all chil-
dren—especially those living in environments
that can prompt toxic stress responses. The ob-
servations and evidence described in the follow-
ing sections provide a strong first step toward
achieving that goal.
Resilience results from a dynamic interaction
etween internal predispositions and external
experiences. Children who do well in the face
of significant disadvantage typically exhibit both
an intrinsic resistance to adversity and strong
elationships with the important adults in their
family and community. Indeed, it is the inter-
action between biology and environment that
uilds the capacities to cope with adversity and
overcome threats to healthy development.4-10
Resilience, therefore, is the result of a combina-
tion of protective factors—and neither individu-