Children's Resilience in the Face of Trauma (continued)

(4) Community support
The availability of social, recreational, spiritual, and other types of community programs is important in fostering physical, social, and emotional health for families. From a broad public health perspective, communities foster resilience in a number of ways. The aims of community programs are to enhance protective processes beginning before the child is born and continuing into adulthood. Such programs promote healthy pregnancies to reduce the number of children born into high-risk situations; offer early childhood programs to scaffold success and build self-esteem; provide school breakfasts to promote readiness for academic learning; develop anti-bullying programs to enhance positive school climate; encourage mentor relationships between the child and a competent adult to ease the burden of stressed-out families; provide safe recreational activities for youth; offer job training to increase household wages; or offer parenting courses to promote positive parenting behaviors.18

(5) Developmental Path
The expression of resilience varies with age. The way a child reacts to a stressor, the factors which facilitate his/her recovery, and the changes that show a child is recovering depend on the child’s developmental stage.

Resilience in young children.

Resilient infants and toddlers exposed to frightening events regain a secure base by seeking a close attachment with their caregivers. Resilient preschoolers conquer their anxiety and fear through play, have their caregivers at an arm’s reach for security and encouragement, persist on challenging tasks, and venture into new explorations. For example, young children who may wet the bed more frequently or cling more tightly to their primary caregiver after a traumatic event may let go of these tendencies as they cope effectively. From birth through age 5 the role of the family, particularly the psychological wellbeing of the child’s primary attachment, is crucial to foster resilience.

Resilience in middle childhood.

Resilient children during middle childhood remember and talk more freely about upsetting events, are able to use language to combat triggers and reminders, ask others for help, practice positive self-talk, or try new activities to keep busy. Middle school children whose grades may have slipped after a traumatic event will show a recovery in their school functioning as they adjust to the circumstances. In addition to the family, as children enter school and participate in other organized social settings (e.g., sports, church, the neighborhood), close relationships with peers, teachers, and other adults play an important role in fostering natural recovery and helping children remain involved in school, social activities, and special events.19

Resilience in adolescence.

Adolescence is a time of movement towards autonomy and self-reliance as well as a time of questioning identity, values and feelings. Nevertheless, resilient adolescents can talk about their feelings and reactions to peers and/or specific trusted adults such as a grandparent or mentors. So, for example, after a traumatic event, an adolescent might initially be irritable and strident in expressing political views, and withdraw from activities he/she used to enjoy. However, over time, resilient adolescents will show interest in considering different points of view and understanding the feelings and beliefs of others. They will become interested in what their future will be, although they may not be sure of where they are going.

Resilient children show:

1) Persistence – The child works on something until it is finished, tries to succeed on a task after failing, stays committed to his/her goals, and remains encouraged.
2) Goal-oriented/Motivated – The child has goals that are important to him/her, works hard to accomplish goals, and enjoys having goals and meeting them.
3) Adaptability – The child feels comfortable with change, believes there are many ways of seeing things, and can easily compromise.
4) Optimism – The child is usually enthusiastic, cheerful, confident that the future holds good things to come, and optimistic that things will get better in the future.
5) Willingness to approach novel events– The child finds it easy to go to new places, enjoys meeting and interacting with new people, and can return to a place where he/she had a bad experience.
6) High self-esteem– The child thinks he/she is a lot of fun to be around, that he/she can handle stressful things in life, and likes him/herself.
7) Intelligence – The child generates creative or novel solutions to unexpected problems or can identify similarities between a new problem and one he/she has already solved.
8) Good social skills – The childcan ask for help when he/she needs it, make friends easily and keep them, and not get into fights.

Summary

Resilience varies with age and situation, making it a completely unique experience within each child. In this time of global concern with terrorism it is important to pursue several areas of inquiry in order to develop strategies to foster resilience. It is crucial to understand issues such as how resilience emerges with different types of stressors and/or traumas, the timelines for children and adolescents to return to a normal developmental course after exposure to traumatic events, and when to intervene during this timeline of recovery. Our knowledge about the emergence of resilience will develop further as our children deal with different types of stress in their respective environments. However, it is important to remember that resilience is a common phenomenon arising from ordinary human adaptive processes. “It does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains, and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities.”20 The experience of 9/11 has left us with the knowledge that terrorist attacks can occur in the United States and that going forward, raising healthy children means raising resilient children.