The Science of Childhood Resilience

Simply put, we can teach children how to become more resilient. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University stated, “Research has identified a common set of factors that predispose children to positive outcomes in the face of significant adversity” (2015). Some of those childhood protective factors include:

• Building a sense of self-efficacy and perceived control.
• Providing opportunities to strengthen adaptive skills and self-regulatory capacities.
• Mobilizing sources of hope.

Harvard researchers conceptualize the idea of resilience as if there is a scale: one side has negative outcomes, and the other side has positive outcomes. From their research, they have asserted that “positive life experiences and coping skills can shift the fulcrum’s [scales] position, making it easier to have positive outcomes” in the face of challenges, which is resilience (2015).

Helping our children and students shift the fulcrum must be a top priority, as teachers, parents, and professionals. Whether the challenge is perceived as small (for example, a broken bone) or much larger (for example, a natural disaster, or witnessing violence), children must be equipped with the ideas, strategies, and supports that can help them bounce back from painful and challenging life experiences.

Harvard University-related researchers further explain that “the brain and other biological systems are most adaptable early in life, and the development that occurs in the earliest years lays the foundation for a wide range of resilient behaviors” (Center on the Developing Child, 2015). While resilience can be developed throughout one’s life, early childhood is an especially potent time and may be the most important.

Science-Based Skills

Kevin Ochsner, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, concluded that reframing challenges (i.e., stimuli) into something positive helps people have better control of their emotions, and more positive outcomes, which leads to more resilience. Subjects who didn’t reframe challenges and perceived events (i.e., stimuli) as negative demonstrated less emotional control and resilience in the face of challenges.

Of course, there are tragedies, which are hard to reframe—but most of the time, we can find something positive or constructive from a challenging situation. Say your daughter had her wisdom teeth out, and you asked her: Is there anything good from this? She may say, “Yes, I get two days off from school, and all the sorbet I can eat!" This is more resilient than her saying, “Nope, this stinks.” That’s not a wrong answer, but she can, little by little, learn how to reframe her challenges and build that skill for her resiliency toolbox.

Being able to reframe is an example of one evidence-based skill to increase resilience, which can help our youth today.

Sidenote: Childhood resilience is a complex and sophisticated subject. Too many children experience incredibly adverse conditions early on, which have the potential to negatively impact their development (learning, behavior, health, and other lifelong impacts). Even children who appear to have an easier path have challenges from a broken bone to losing a loved one. There is no child on the planet who couldn’t benefit from becoming more resilient and helping others to bounce back, too.