Resilient Children

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Resilient Children

Emmy E. Werner

Research has identified numerous risk factors that increase the probability of developmental problems in infants and young children. Among them are bio- logical risks, such as pre- and perinatal complications, congenital defects, and low birthweight; as well as intense stress in the caregiving environment, such as chronic poverty, family discord, or parental mental illness (Honig 1984).

2. In a 1979 review of the literature of children's responses to such stress and risks, British child psychiatrist Michael Rutter wrote:

There is a regrettable tendency to focus gloomily on the ills of mankind and on all that can and does go wrong.... The potential for prevention surely lies in increasing our knowledge and understanding of the reasons why some children are not damaged by deprivation...

(p. 49)

3. For even in the most terrible homes, and beset with physical handicaps, some children appear to develop stable, healthy personalities and to display a remarkable degree of resilience, i.e. the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or sustained life stress. Such children have recently become the focus of attention of a few researchers who have asked What is right with these children? and, by implication, How can we help others become less vulnerable in the face of life's adversities?

The search for protective factors

4. As in any detective story, a number of overlapping sets of observations have begun to yield clues to the roots of

resiliency in children. Significant findings have come from the few longitudinal studies which have followed the same groups of children from infancy or the preschool years through adolescence (Block and Block, 1980; Werner and Smith 1982). Some researchers have studied the lives of minority children who did well in school in spite of chronic poverty and discrimination (Clark 1983; Shipman 1976). A few psychiatrists and psychologists have focused their attention on the resilient offspring of psychotic patients (Anthony, 1974; Werner and Smith, 1982) and on the coping patterns of children of divorce (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980). Others have uncovered hidden sources of strength and gentleness among the uprooted children of contemporary wars in El Salvador, Ireland, Israel, Lebanon. and Southeast Asia (Ayala-Canales 1984; Rosenblatt 1983). Perhaps some of the most moving testimonials to the resiliency of children are the life stories of the child survivors of the Holocaust (Moskovitz, 1983).

5. All of these children have demonstrated unusual psychological strengths despite a history of severe and/or prolonged psychological stress. Their personal competencies and some unexpected sources of support in their caregiving environment either compensated for, challenged, or protected them against the adverse effects of stressful life events (Garmezy, 1984). Some researchers have called these children invulnerable (Anthony, 1974); others consider them to be stress resistant (Garmezy and Tellegren, 1984); still others refer to them as superkids (Kauffman et al. 1979). In our own longitudinal study on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, we have found them to be vulnerable, but invincible (Werner and Smith, 1982).

6. These were children like Michael for whom the odds, on paper, did not seem very promising. The son of teen-age parents, Michael was born prematurely and spent his first three weeks of life in the hospital, separated from his mother. Immediately after his birth, his father was sent with the Army to Southeast Asia for almost two years. By the time Michael was eight, he had three younger siblings and his parents were divorced. His mother left the area and had no further contact with the children.

7. And there was Mary, born to an over-

weight, nervous, and erratic mother who had experienced several miscarriages, and a father who was an unskilled farm laborer with only four years of education. Between Mary's fifth and tenth birthdays, her mother had several hospitalizations for repeated bouts with mental illness, after having inflicted both physical and emotional abuse on her daughter.

8. Yet both Michael and Mary, by age 18, were individuals with high self-esteem and sound values, caring for others and liked by their peers, successful in school, and looking forward to their adult futures.

9. We have learned that such resilient children have four central characteristics in common:

• an active, evocative approach toward solving life's problems, enabling them to negotiate successfully an abundance of emotionally hazardous experiences;

• a tendency to perceive their experiences constructively, even if they caused pain or suffering;

• the ability, from infancy on, to gain other people's positive attention;

• a strong ability to use faith in order to maintain a positive vision of a meaningful life (O'Connell-Higgins, 1983).

Protective factors within the child

10. Resilient children like Mary and Michael tend to have temperamental characteristics that elicit positive responses from family members as well as strangers (Garmezy, 1983; Rutter, 1978). They both suffered from birth complications and grew up in homes marred by poverty, family discord, or parental mental illness, but even as babies they were described as active, affectionate, cuddly, good natured, and easy to deal with. These same children already met the world on their own terms by the time they were toddlers (Werner and Smith, 1982).

11. Several investigators have noted both a pronounced autonomy and a strong social orientation in resilient preschool children (Block, 1981; Murphy and Moriarty, 1976). They tend to play vigorously, seek out novel experiences, lack fear and are quite self-reliant. But they are able to ask for help from adults or peers when they need it.

12. Sociability coupled with a remarkable sense of independence are characteristics also found among the resilient school-age children of psychotic parents. Anthony (1974) describes his meeting with a nine-year-old girl, whose father was an alcoholic and abused her and whose mother was chronically depressed. The girl suffered from a congenital dislocation of the hip which had produced a permanent limp, yet he was struck by her friendliness and the way she approached him in a comfortable, trustful way.

13. The same researcher tells of another nine-year-old, the son of a schizophrenic father and an emotionally disturbed mother, who found a refuge from his parents' outbursts in a basement room he had stocked with books, records, and food. There the boy had created an oasis of normalcy in a chaotic household.

14. Resilient children often find a refuge and a source of self-esteem in hobbies and creative interests. Kauffman et al, (1979) describes the pastimes of two children who were the offspring of a schizophrenic mother and a depressed father:

When David (age 8) comes home from school, he and his best friend often go up to the attic to play. This area ... is filled with model towns, railroads, airports and castles.... He knows the detailed history of most of his models, particularly the airplanes.... David's older sister, now 15, is extraordinarily well-read. Her other interests include swimming, her boyfriend, computers and space exploration. She is currently working on a computer program to predict planetary orbits, (pp. 138, 139)

15. The resilient children on the island of Kauai, whom we studied for nearly two decades, were not unusually talented, but they displayed a healthy androgeny in their interests and engaged in hobbies that were not narrowly sex-typed. Such activities, whether it was fishing, swimming, horseback riding, or hula dancing, gave them a reason to feel proud. Their hobbies, and their lively sense of humor, became a solace when things fell apart in their lives (Masten, 1982; Werner and Smith, 1982).

16. In middle childhood and adolescence,

resilient children are often engaged in acts of "required helpfulness" (Garmezy, in press). On Kauai, many adolescents took care of their younger siblings. Some managed the household when a parent was ill or hospitalized: others worked part-time after school to support their family. Such acts of caring have also been noted by Anthony (1974) and Bleuler (1978) in their studies of the resilient offspring of psychotic parents and by Ayala-Canales (1984) and Moskovitz (1983) among the resilient orphans of wars and concentration camps.

Protective factors within the family

17. Despite chronic poverty, family discord or parental mental illness, most resilient children have had the opportunity to establish a close bond with at least one caregiver from whom they received lots of attention during the first year of life. The stress-resistant children in the Kauai Longitudinal Study as well as the resilient offspring of psychotic parents studied by Anthony (1974) had enough good nurturing to establish a basic sense of trust.

l8. Some of this nurturing came from substitute caregivers within the family, such as older siblings, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Such alternate caregivers play an important role as positive models of identification in the lives of resilient children, whether they are reared in poverty (Kellam et al. 1975), or in a family where a parent is mentally ill (Kauffman et al. 1979), or coping with the aftermath of divorce (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980).

19. Resilient children seem to be especially adept at actively recruiting surrogate parent. The latter can come from the ranks of babysitters, nannies, or student roomers (Kauffman et al. 1979); they can be parents of friends (Werner and Smith, 1982), or even a housemother in an orphanage (Ayala-Canales, 1984; Moskovitz, 1983).

20. The example of a mother who is gainfully and steadily employed appears to be an especially powerful model of identification for resilient girls reared in poverty, whether they are Black (Clark, 1983) or Asian-American (Werner and Smith, 1982). Maternal employment and the need for sibling caregiving seems to contribute to the pronounced autonomy and sense of responsibility noted among these girls, especially in households where the latter is permanently absent.

21. Structure and rules in the household and assigned chores enabled many resilient children to cope well in spite of poverty and discrimination, whether they lived on the rural island of Kauai, or in the inner cities of the American Midwest, or in a London borough (Clark, 1983).

22. Resilient children also seem to have been imbued by their families with a sense of coherence (Antonovsky, 1979). They manage to believe that life makes sense, that they have some control over their fate, and that God helps those who help themselves (Murphy and Moriarty, 1976). This sense of meaning persists among resilient children, even if they are uprooted by wars or scattered as refugees to the four corners of the earth. It enables them to love despite hate, and to maintain the ability to behave com- passionately toward other people (Ayala-Canales, 1984).

Protective factors outside the family

23. Resilient children find a great deal of

emotional support outside of their immediate family. They tend to be well-liked by their classmates and have at least one, and usually several, close friends and confidants (Garmezy 1983). In addition, they tend to rely on informal networks of neighbors, peers, and elders for counsel and advice in times of crisis and life transitions.

24. Resilient children are apt to like school and to do well in school, not exclusively in academics, but also in sports, drama, or music. Even if they are not unusually talented, they put whatever abilities they have to good use. Often they make school a home away from home, a refuge from a disordered household. A favorite teacher can become an important model of identification for a resilient child whose own home is beset by family conflict or dissolution (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980).

25. In their studies of London schools, Rutter and his colleagues (1979) found that good experiences in the classroom could mitigate the effects of considerable stress at home. Among the qualities that characterized the more successful schools were the setting of appropriately high standards, effective feedback by the teacher to the students with ample use of praise, the setting of good models of behavior by teachers, and giving students positions of trust and responsibility. Children who attended such schools developed few, if any, emotional or behavioral problems despite considerable deprivation and discord at home (Pines, 1984).

26. Early childhood programs and a favorite teacher can act as an important buffer against adversity in the lives of resilient young children. Moskovitz (1983), in her follow-up study in adulthood of the childhood survivors of concentration camps, noted the pervasive influence of such a warm, caring teacher.

27. Participation in extracurricular activities or clubs can be another important informal source of support for resilient children. Many youngsters on Kauai were poor by material standards, but they participated in activities that allowed them to be part of a cooperative enterprise, whether being cheerleader for the home team or raising an animal in the 4-H Club. Some resilient older youth were members of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Associations which enabled them to help other children less fortunate than themselves. For still others emotional support came from a church group, a youth leader in the YMCA or YWCA, or from a favorite minister, priest, or rabbi.

The shifting balance between

vulnerability and resiliency

28. For some children some stress appears to have a steeling rather than a scarring effect (Anthony, 1974). But we need to keep in mind that there is a shifting balance between stressful life events which heighten children's vulnerability and the protective factors in their lives which enhance their resiliency. This balance can change with each stage of the life cycle and also with the sex of the child. Most studies in the United States and in Europe, for example, have shown that boys appear to be more vulnerable than girls when exposed to chronic and intense family discord in childhood, but this trend appears to be reversed by the end of adolescence.

29. As long as the balance between stressful life events and protective factors is manageable for children, they can cope. But when the stressful life events outweigh the protective factors, even the most resilient child can develop problems. Those who care for children, whether their own or others, can help restore this balance, either by decreasing the child's exposure to intense or chronic life stresses, or by increasing the number of protective factors, i.e. competencies and sources of support.

Implications

30. What then are some of the implications of the still tentative findings from studies of resilient children? Most of all, they provide a more hopeful perspective than can be derived from reading the extensive literature on problem children which predominates in clinical psychology, child psychiatry, special education, and social work. Research on resilient children provides us with a focus on the self-righting tendencies that appear to move some children toward normal development under all but the most persistent adverse circumstances.

3l. Those of us who care for young children, who work with or on behalf of them, can help tilt the balance from vulnerability to resiliency if we

• accept children's temperamental idiosyncracies and allow them some experiences that challenge, but do not overwhelm, their coping abilities;

• convey to children a sense of responsibility and caring, and. in turn, reward them for helpfulness and cooperation;

• encourage a child to develop a special interest, hobby, or activity that can serve as a source of gratification and self-esteem;

• model, by example, a conviction that life makes sense despite the inevitable adversities that each of us encounters;

• encourage children to reach out beyond their nuclear family to a beloved relative or friend.

32. Research on resilient children has taught us a lot about the special importance of surrogate parents in the lives of children exposed to chronic or intense distress. A comprehensive assessment of the impact on siblings, grandparents, foster parents, nannies, and babysitters on the development of high risk children is elaborated upon in Werner (1984).

33. Outside the family circle there are other powerful role models that give emotional support to a vulnerable child. The three most frequently encountered in studies of resilient children are: favorite teacher, a good neighbor, or a member of the clergy.

34. There is a special need to strengthen such informal support for those children and their families in our communities which appear most vulnerable because they lack—temporarily or permanently—some of the essential social bonds that appear to buffer stress: working mothers of young children with no provisions for stable child care; single, divorced, or teenage parents; hospitalized and handicapped children in need of special care who are separated from their families for extended periods of time: and migrant or refugee children without permanent roots in a community.

35. Two other findings from the studies of resilient children have implications for the well-being of all children and for those who care for them.

(1) At some point in their young lives, resilient children were required to carry out a socially desirable task to prevent others in their family, neighborhood, or community from experiencing distress or discomfort. Such acts of required helpfulness led to enduring and positive changes in the young helpers.

(2) The central component in the lives of the resilient children that contributed to their effective coping appeared to be a feeling of confidence or faith that things will work out as well as can be reasonably expected, and that the odds can be surmounted.

36. The stories of resilient children teach us that such a faith can develop and be sustained, even under adverse circumstances, if children encounter people who give meaning to their lives and a reason for commitment and caring. Each of us can impart this gift to a child—in the classroom, on the playground, in the neighborhood, in the family—if we care enough.

Emmy E. Werner, Ph.D., is Professor

of Human Development and Research

Child Psychologist, University of

California at Davis, California.