Building resilience in children.īuilding small humans into healthy, thriving big ones isn’t about clearing adversity out of their way. The right experiences can shape the individual, intrinsic characteristics of a child in a way that will build their resilience. One of the most exciting findings in the last decade or so is that we can change the wiring of the brain through the experiences we expose it to. Resilience is not for the genetically blessed and can be strengthened at any age. Of course, even the most resilient of warriors have days where it all gets too much, but low resilience will likely drive certain patterns of behaviour more often. They might become emotional, they might withdraw, or they might become defiant, angry or resentful. They will also have different ways of showing when the demands that are being put upon them outweigh their capacity to cope. How does resilience affect behaviour?Ĭhildren will have different levels of resilience and different ways of responding to and recovering from stressful times. When this happens, the physiological changes that are activated by stress start to reverse, expanding the capacity to recovering from, adapt to, or find a solution to stress, challenge or adversity. Resilience is related to the capacity to activate the prefrontal cortex and calm the amygdala. Sometimes not having too much involvement from the pre-frontal cortex can be a good thing – there are times we just need to get the job done without pausing to reflect, plan or contemplate (such as crying out in pain to bring help fast, or powering through an all-nighter). These are known as ‘executive functions’. It is involved in attention, problem solving, impulse control, and regulating emotion. The prefrontal cortex is the control tower of the brain. Stress can also cause the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain to temporarily shut down. Over an extended period of time, they can weaken the immune system (which is why students often get sick during exams), the body and the brain. When the stress is ongoing, the physiological changes stay switched on. From there, messages are sent to the brain to release its chemical cocktail (including adrenaline and cortisol) to help the body deal with the stress. The stress response is initiated by the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for our instinctive, impulsive responses. In the short-term, this is brilliant, but the changes were only ever mean to be for the short-term. Our heart rate increases, blood pressure goes up, and adrenaline and cortisol (the stress hormone) surge through the body. Here’s what you need to know.ĭuring times of stress or adversity, the body goes through a number of changes designed to make us faster, stronger, more alert, more capable versions of ourselves. The great news is that resilience is something that can be nurtured in all children. When children are resilient, they are braver, more curious, more adaptable, and more able to extend their reach into the world. Resilience is being able to bounce back from stress, challenge, tragedy, trauma or adversity. What we can do is give them the skills so these challenges are never able to break them. We can’t change that they will face challenges along the way. The potential for happiness and greatness lies in all of them, and will mean different things to different kids. There is no happiness gene, no success gene, and no ‘doer of extraordinary things’ gene. Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.All children are capable of extraordinary things. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory-with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary-is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life-with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy-despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.”Īrguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.
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