3.2 Fostering resilience

In recent years, the dominant approach to the promotion of young people’s mental and emotional wellbeing has been to seek ways of developing resilience and promoting the protective factors that might reduce young people’s vulnerability to mental health problems. An example of how these factors are applied in policy can be seen in the work of sociologist Simone Fullagar who examined policy responses to the high rates of suicide among young people in rural areas of Australia. Fullagar reported that policy focused on identifying risk factors such as previous suicide attempts, mental health problems and social isolation, and on promoting protective factors such as social connectedness, problem-solving skills, and readily available mental health services was valuable in supporting young people (Fullagar, 2005, p. 32).

The family therapist and professor of social work Michael Ungar and colleagues (2013) argues that it is important to not just focus on the child or young person and how they can be supported to develop resilience but also on how society can be changed to nurture and foster resilience and remove challenges and barriers that make some children and young people more vulnerable to adversity.

In the next activity, you’ll focus on protective factors and consider whether you could apply this knowledge to a young person you know.

Activity 7: The seven Cs of resilience

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Watch this video – you’ll probably need to watch more than once – and work through steps 1 and 2 below.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 4: The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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Transcript: Video 4: The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

KENNETH GINSBURG

Competence is about the ability to handle situations effectively. It's not something that is this vague can-do spirit. It's actually rooted in reality and experience.

It's about having the skills. And we can build those skills in our children. First, it's about noticing and building on the skills that they already have. But it's also understanding that they haven't yet had the life experiences or the opportunities to develop other skills. And that we can prepare them for life when we help them to build those skills.

So what do they look like? Organizational skills. If you don't have organizational skills, you're not going to succeed academically now or in the workplace in the future. Communication skills. If you don't have communication skills, you're not going to find your spouse ultimately. And you're not going be able to get a job.

You have to be able to say to someone, I'm the right person for the job. Self-advocacy skills. Skills to be able to stand up and do what you know is right, even if the people around you are telling you otherwise.

Which brings me to peer negotiation skills. We worry about peer pressure. We don't need to, not if we prepare our kids to know how to recognize and respond to peer pressure.

Just as important as our building our kids skills is us not tearing down the skills and competencies they already have. Too often adults treat young people as if they're incapable. In a top-down fashion, we correct them, we overprotect them, and we tell them what to do.

A classic example is the way we lecture kids. We understand the consequences that might happen from a given action. And what do we do? We tell them in rapid-fire. And we tell them all the things that can go wrong. And then end with some dire consequence.

They can't hear us. It's not the way their brains think. So they get that we don't think they're capable. They get that we're angry and frightened. But they don't know why.

When we learn to talk to kids differently and honor the intelligence that they do have, by breaking subjects down so that they can figure things out one step at a time, another step, another step so that they get it, got it, own it, then we honor the intelligence that they have. And they feel capable and they feel competent.

When you're thinking about competence in your kids, so often, we forget how to prepare our kids. Preparation is protection. Hovering and over-protection is not a way to build your child's competency.

Think about what message over protection sends. When you step into often and you say things like let me help with that, what's the message? The message is I don't think you're capable of doing this on your own. It's not a good way to build our kids competencies.

So think about this. Do you let your child make her own mistakes or develop the skills to right herself? Do you try to protect her from every fall or help her understand that falling down is the only way you learn how to get up stronger? Truly, fear of failure is the greatest way to stem competence building.

What you want is for your child to understand where they excel. You want them to find their islands of competencies. I call these spikes. Ultimately, when we're successful, it's going to be because we figured out how to contribute to the world. What is our spike? What are we great at?

The only way we're going to figure that out is to know where you're not great at. And that's going to be a lot of trial and error to get there. So, literally, we have to learn to celebrate our children's unevenness so that their spikes show.

And you have to ask yourself, are you scared of failure? Do you model for your child that when you fall down, you get up stronger? Does your child know that you're uneven?

Every one of your kids is different. Every one of them is developing a different skill set. Every one of them has the opportunity to sharpen their unique spike. And what happens so often when we're incredibly well-meaning is to compare one child to the other. And when we do that, we undermine kids' ability to feel good about themselves.

Another way of understanding the importance of unevenness and actually why we should celebrate unevenness and why it leads ultimately to success for our adolescents is to actually look within their brains and understand what's happening. There's a process called pruning that's happening. So what happens is during adolescence, it's not that you grow extra brain cells.

What happens during adolescence is that your brain cells become more efficient. They become more efficient in two ways. One is the body lays down what's called myelin, it's called myelination. And what this is insulation in the brain that makes all the signals travel more efficiently and faster.

The other thing that's happening is brain cells are connecting with each other and forming these very important connections. And the brain cells that don't need to be a part of that connection get cut away. That's called pruning.

Adolescent development is about pruning. It is about taking away that which you don't need precisely so that which is your strongest self rises. So when your child during adolescence is beginning to cut away certain activities so they can concentrate on something else.

So when your child is beginning to realize that they're not as good at one subject and want to devote more time to another subject, don't think of that as quitting, don't think of that as failure. Think of that as pruning. Pruning to develop the strongest shoots.

And it mimics or copies exactly what is happening in the adolescent brain. You know it's competencies that build confidence and that ultimately develop in us the skill sets that are going to allow us to flourish in great times and to withstand the challenging times.

End transcript: Video 4: The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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Video 4: The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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Step 1: Pick out three or more ways in which you could apply these protective factors with a young person you know.

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Step 2: Using the polling tool, vote for your favourite of the seven Cs, not just because it speaks most to you, but because it shows where you could develop your own competence as a parent or caregiving adult.

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Answer

Resilient responses to all kinds of challenge can be of immense benefit to the young person and those close to them. Resilience in young people is achievable through everyday-sounding requirements such as:

‘a healthy human brain in good working order; close relationships with competent caring adults; committed families; effective schools and communities; opportunities to succeed; and beliefs in the self, nurtured by positive interactions with the world’ (Masten 2015, p.8).

Although it is difficult to imagine such all-round perfection, it can be comforting to know that resilience is not a mysterious quality that either people have or don’t have; resilience can be nurtured.

Next you consider how resilience can be fostered in schools.