Helping Children Build Resilience in Unprecedented Times
No matter where you live in the country, this year has brought multiple stressful events: wildfires all over the west coast, hurricanes and floods in the south, all on top of a world-wide pandemic. We are facing unprecedented times. You may be asking, how much more can we take? And what is this stress doing to our children?
We know that persistent adversity due to reoccurring, stressful, or traumatic events can have a significant impact on a child’s neural and social development (O'Neill et al., 2010). We also know that children are incredibly adaptable and resilient. Research shows that we can actually help children to become more resilient in times of crisis.
While a child’s brain is in its most vulnerable period of growth during childhood, it also has the most plasticity, or the ability to form new neural pathways that rewire the brain to handle stress. Studies on both resiliency and the plasticity of the brain have shown that in a nurturing and safe environment, children can both heal from trauma and restore optimal brain functioning for higher-order thinking and successful relationships (Kelly et al., 2014). Children that have grown up in external environments with positive messages of love, trust, safety, and understanding are shown to have a greater ability to deal with stress in healthy ways and tackle difficult tasks. When a child’s environment includes handling stress in a negative and destructive way, children often have shorter patience and may become impulsive or destructive. (Forbes, 2012). Attachment plays a key role in brain plasticity and emotional regulation.
Your relationship with your child is one of the greatest tools in helping them deal with abrupt change and stress in positive ways. So what can you do to help your child, or the children you work with, build more plasticity and resilience?
Take Care of Yourself! Yes, it may sound too simple, but taking care of YOURSELF and being calm and regulated is actually the best way to support your child or students. The way a child learns to regulate their emotions is through their attachment and connection to their caretakers. The more YOU are regulated, the more your child or students will be able to regulate their emotions and behavior. When we are in a stress response, we have less access to the parts of our brain that control empathy and creativity, which are essential tools to supporting children in healthy ways. Deep breathing, connecting with supportive friends and family over the phone, exercise, taking a break, drinking tea and journaling can be just a few ways to regulate yourself. It is not selfish to put your needs first! It is actually a necessary way to build and model resilience for your child or the children you work with.
Connect with Your Community. Recent studies have shown that community care is just as important as self-care. Humans are social animals and many people regulate themselves through their connections with others. Connecting with one to two supportive friends over the phone each day is critical in establishing a trusting network of support, which is essential during a crisis. We need each other to get through difficult things in a healthy way. So reach out and let trusted friends and family know how you feel and allow them to support you.
Daily Rhythms. Following a child’s regular routine or daily rhythm, as much as possible, will help both you and them. This may not be possible if you are evacuated. That is okay. Be gentle with yourself. Children thrive on the daily rhythms and routines that they are used to. Abrupt changes to their routine often send them into a dysregulated state, and you may see more negative behavior. Just know it won’t last forever. Keep yourself regulated so you can hold the container for your child to feel the way they need to. Hold onto your compassion for yourself and your child and remember that this too shall pass.
Let them Play! Allowing unstructured playtime for your child will help them process change and disruptions in their environment. Play is how children regulate their emotions. They may play out scenes they are trying to process, which could be disturbing to you. Allowing them to play and guiding them in a positive direction can enable them to build neural pathways that allow critical thinking and creativity which are essential tools for dealing with difficulty and building resiliency. So let them just play! As the child developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget said, “play is the work of childhood.”
Gratitude. When bad things happen, our brain immediately wants to focus on the negative thing that has happened because it is trying to keep you safe. This is natural; it's an essential survival tool. However, we can rewire our brains for resiliency, which doesn’t mean shoving away the “bad” stuff, it just means also remembering to be grateful for the things you do have, even if it’s just a bottle of water. Start simple. Journal or list one to five things a day that you are grateful for. Do it with your child if possible. This will literally rewire your brain to look for the positive in a given situation. Gratitude and hope are how humans thrive and survive the changes and difficulties of their environment, no matter how hard.
Humans have survived so much throughout time. Plagues, wars, famine, and unsurmountable difficulties. Victor E. Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp in World War II, said, “everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” You have, in every moment, the ability to choose the way with compassion and hope. Even when we lose our temper, or yell, or let our child play on the ipad way too long, or have a pile of dishes a mile high you just can't conquer, be compassionate with yourself. Perhaps one of the worst outcomes of trauma is the lingering sense of victimization, leading to hopelessness and an inability to change one’s situation. But the way we heal, as humans, is through changing the story of our trauma, reimagining our lives, and banding together in our communities. These are the things that build strength and resiliency.
References:
Forbes, T. (2012). Help for Billy: A beyond consequences approach to helping challenging children in the classroom. Boulder, CO: Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC.
Kelly, T. M., Pransky, J., & Sedgeman, J. A. (2014). Realizing resilience in trauma exposed juvenile offenders: A promising new intervention for juvenile justice and prevention professionals. Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, 7(1), 143-151. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-014-0018-8
O'Neill, L., Guenette, F., & Kitchenham, A. (2010). Am I safe here and do you like me? Understanding complex trauma and attachment disruption in the classroom. British Journal of Special Education, 37(4), 190-197. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8578.2010.00477.x