Resiliency
Definition: The capacity to recover from adverse circumstances. It is the successful outcome of an interaction between the individual and environment.
Children bring to circumstances personal strengths which make them less vulnerable, which serve as buffers to damage, and empower them to cope with and recover from set backs.
Resilient children are competent in academics, behavior, emotions, and social skills.
- No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship.
- We need to "catch them being good" if we want to foster positive behavior choices.
- Teach expectations (clear, role model, practice, feedback)
- Allow failure to be okay (as long as we learn from our failures)
- The simplest way to ensure children expect success is to make sure that they have it.
- Maintain high expectations and share those expectations with children.
- Reframe negative views of child
Areas of Resiliency
- Sense of Mastery - optimism, self-efficacy and adaptability increases the likelihood that the individual will be able to cope with adverse circumstances.
- Self-efficacy - Problem solving attitudes and strategies: seeing problems as challenges or puzzles to be solved; having strategies for approaching problems which allows ones to master one's environment.
- Sense of Relatedness - Relationship with others and sense
of relatedness serves as a buffer against stress.
- Belonging to the same family, group or type/the way in which people or things are connected;
- Comfort with others;
- faith or trust in others;
- Sense of access to support by others when in need; and
- the capacity to have differences with and still be in a relationship with others.
- Emotional Reactivity - Vulnerability to stress or impact from
adversity is related to the individuals pre-existing level of
emotional reactivity.
- Sensitivity - threshold for reaction and the intensity of the reaction.
- Recovery - ability to bounce back, from emotional arousal or disturbance of emotional equilibrium.
- Adaptability - flexibility or adapting to change, being personally receptive to criticism and learning from one's mistakes.
Behaviors which improve Resiliency -
- Communication
- takes turn in conversation
- says please and think you
- pays attention to instructions
- Cooperation
- follows your directions
- ignores classmates when they are distracting
- Assertion
- asks for help from adults
- Empathy
- tries to comfort others
- shows concern for others
- Responsibility
- respects the property of others
- acts responsibly when with others
- takes responsibility for group activity
- Engagement
- invites others to join activities
- invites others to join activities
- joins activities that have already started
- introduces himself/herself to others
- Self-control
- makes a compromise during a conflict
- Controls emotions when disagreeing with others
- responds appropriately when pushed or hit
It is better to build children than to repair adults.
"It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up a the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more." - Anne Frank.