How To Promote Resiliency in Children  

Many children grow up in circumstances that would challenge the strongest individuals. Some flourish and some flounder but the reasons have not been well understood.  In the past, improving the self esteem of children was the viewed as the way to help children succeed. Some people thought that giving children lavish praise for performing minor tasks was the way to do this.  Children, however, discovered that the work they were told was “fantastic!” was not as great as they had been told it was. The children also craved praise for their deeds, instead of understanding that they were just doing what was normally expected of children their age.  Their “victories” were hollow.  It became clear that just making children feel good about themselves did not give them the ability to succeed at school or to overcome adversity. In the 1990s researchers started looking at what characterized successful adults – those who had been successful at school and now had fulfilling work and relationships – even if they had grown up in poverty, in homes or communities in which violence was common, or where hopelessness pervaded every day life.  The research uncovered a characteristic they termed “resilience”…

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