Resiliency is the ability to overcome illness, depression, and adversity unscathed and come out stronger after weathering the storms of life. In other words, one who is resilient comes through emotional and/or physical trauma without any injury or harm to their intellectual, creative, emotional, social, and physical development, or the person’s self-image, self-esteem, and self-confidence.
News Flash: Young people who are victims of adverse childhood experiences are typically unable to recover completely.
All too often, I hear an adult responding to situations of child abuse or trauma with comments such as, “Kids are resilient.” While these adults mean well and certainly want to present the best outcomes for abused youth, the statements are misleading. Why? Because the truth is that individuals, no matter how resilient they are, are affected by abuse. Whether it’s physical, sexual, emotional, social, or neglect, they pay a price. Which begs the question, how high a price do they pay? Obviously, the more times a young person experiences adversity, or the more severe the adversity, the greater the impact we anticipate it will have on their lives. Resilience is not guaranteed.
The Resiliency Myth
It is a myth to assume that all children are inherently resilient. Some individuals are born with traits, such as temperament and personality characteristics, that predispose them to think, behave, and respond to adversity in more adaptive ways. These traits can make it easier for them to navigate and recover from life's challenges compared to those who do not possess the same predispositions. For example, individuals with easy temperaments have an easier time adapting to change, including unexpected obstacles that pop up. Individuals who score high on the Big Five personality traits—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience—and low on neuroticism tend to cope with adversity more effectively, adapt to change more readily, and recover from setbacks more quickly than individuals who exhibit the opposite pattern of traits.
TRAITS ARE NOT ENOUGH
The varying resiliency traits individuals are born with are why we see young people raised in the same dysfunctional homes respond so differently to their adverse experiences. For example, we know that despite experiencing the same level of abuse in their homes, one sibling becomes a doctor, whereas the other one becomes a homeless drug addict.
While individuals with temperament and personality traits that lend themselves to resiliency can handle adversity better than those without those traits, all individuals need opportunities to build resiliency skills. Resiliency skills are the behaviors, thoughts, and actions used to adapt to adversity, stress, or trauma.
Key skills include:
- Emotional regulation
- Cognitive reappraisal (optimism)
- Proactive problem-solving
- Maintaining social connections
- Self-care.
In other words, even those children who have resilient lending temperaments and personalities need opportunities to build, practice, and hone resiliency skills!
Hope For Resiliency
There is hope for young people who encounter adversity but lack resilience traits and skills. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In fact, it takes specific skills training, practice of thought patterns, and a big dose of awareness along the way.
Parents, teachers, and policymakers can provide young people with opportunities to learn skills that support resilience. Organizations that work with at-risk youth can offer this type of training to adults so they can help turn the lives around of so many lost kids.
Adults who work with children must turn their homes, classrooms, or other spaces into environments that offer trauma-informed care, use whole-child teaching practices, and provide positive youth guidance to help children build resilience.