Resilience

About resilience
What makes children resilient?
Characteristics of resilience
Ways to promote resilience
The value of recreational programs
References
Resources

Characteristics of resilience

The children who fare best in life have learned from nurturing adults how to maintain realistic optimism about the future and how to accept their own skills, abilities, and challenges.  Rather than relying on exaggerated praise, they develop a quiet confidence in their abilities, whether at school or in their home and personal lives.  They know they have gifts, they know they have weaknesses, but neither overwhelms their sense of self.  Primarily, they know they can weather almost any storm in life because they feel competent.  This sense of personal competence arises from having positive but realistic attitudes and skills.

Learning to be positive, committed, and persevering distinguishes children and teens who just get by from those who excel.  People who are chronically pessimistic (a characteristic of people who lack resilience) can become depressed.  This is primarily because they think in self-defeating ways.  For instance, they may believe that their current difficult situation will never change; that there is something permanent and unchangeable about themselves that brings on their problems; that one bad incident is bound to bring on another.  Research has shown that changing unproductive thinking styles like these is an effective way of enhancing an individual’s resistance to developing depression and of increasing resilience.

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