All instructions are in the Word doc. I have provided the article reading and the three YouTube videos with the links.
All children face adversities in life. A child's individual and family histories and the resources that are available in the community can "tip the scale" to increase the chances of positive outcomes and encourage the development of resilience. Review the article Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strength the Foundations of Resilience. Then watch these videos from Harvard University's Center for the Developing Child to learn more about resilience in children and their communities: · What is Resilience? (2015 video, 2 minutes in length, captioned) · How Resilience is Built (2015 video, 2 minutes in length, captioned) · The Science of Resilience (2015 video, 2 minutes in length, captioned) Then post a response to the following: 1. Based on what you learned from the videos and readings explain what the fulcrum represents and how it helps us to understand resilience in children who have experienced toxic stress or trauma. 2. What are some individual (child) and family factors that help determine whether the child moves toward positive outcomes or negative outcomes after facing adversity or trauma? 3. What are some resources that communities and societies need to help improve the resilience of children? 4. What programs or services would you propose in your own community to help build resilience among children? Explain why you believe these services are needed and how they would help. Please answer these questions according to the videos and article. I also need a reference sheet. Click the blue letter for the article and videos so it can open on a new browser but if it doesn’t open I have provided you with pdf and the links are below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqO7YoMsccU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSf7pRpOgu8&t=21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r8hj72bfGo Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience WORKING PAPER 1313 MEMBERS Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D. (Chair) Director, Center on the Developing Child, Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital Pat Levitt, Ph.D. (Science Director) Simms/Mann Chair in Developmental Neurogenetics, Institute for the Developing Mind, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, W. M. Keck Provost Professor in Neurogenetics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California Silvia Bunge, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley Judy L. Cameron, Ph.D. Professor of Psychiatry and Obstetrics & Gynecology, Director of Outreach, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Greg J. Duncan, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor, Department of Education, University of California, Irvine Philip A. Fisher, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon, Senior Scientist, Oregon Social Learning Center Nathan A. Fox, Ph.D. Distinguished University Professor, Director, Child Development Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park Megan R. Gunnar, Ph.D. Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota Takao K. Hensch, Ph.D. Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Professor of Neurology, Director, Conte Center for Basic Mental Health Research at Harvard University, Senior Research Associate in Neurology, Boston Children’s Hospital Fernando D. Martinez, M.D. Regents’ Professor, Director, Arizona Respiratory Center, Director, BIO5 Institute and CTSI, Swift-McNear Professor of Pediatrics, University of Arizona Linda C. Mayes, M.D. Arnold Gesell Professor, Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology, Yale Child Study Center Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D. Alfred E. Mirsky Professor, Head, Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, The Rockefeller University Charles A. Nelson III, Ph.D. Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research, Boston Children’s Hospital, Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School About the Authors The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child is a multidisciplinary, multi-university collaboration designed to bring the science of early childhood and early brain development to bear on public decision-making. Established in 2003, the Council is committed to an evidence-based approach to building broad-based public will that transcends political partisanship and recognizes the complementary responsibilities of family, community, workplace, and government to promote the well-being of all young children. For more information, visit www.developingchild.net. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of former Council member W. Thomas Boyce, M.D. and Anat Zaidman, Ph.D. to the drafting of this paper. Please note: The content of this paper is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the opinions of the funders or partners. Suggested citation: National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2015). Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience: Working Paper 13. http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu © 2015, National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University PARTNERS FrameWorks Institute National Governors Association Center for Best Practices National Conference of State Legislatures TruePoint Center for Higher Ambition Leadership SPONSORS Alliance for Early Success Buffett Early Childhood Fund Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Palix Foundation The Issue WWW.DEVELOPINGCHILD.HARVARD.EDU Strengthening the Foundations of Resilience 1 the future prosperity of any society depends on a continuing investment in the healthy development of the next generation. The well-documented connection between adverse early ex- periences and a wide range of costly problems, such as lower school achievement and higher rates of criminal behavior and chronic disease, underscores the extent to which reducing the burdens of significant adversity on families with young children must be a critical part of that investment. That said, not all children exposed to stressful circumstances experience detrimental consequenc- es. A better understanding of why some do well despite serious hardship could inform more effec- tive policies and programs to provide support for families and help more disadvantaged children reach their full potential. Decades of research in the behavioral and social sciences have produced a rich knowledge base that explains why some people develop the adaptive capacities to overcome significant ad- versity and others do not. Whether the burdens come from the hardships of poverty, the chal- lenges of parental substance abuse or serious mental illness, the stresses of war, the threats of recurrent violence or chronic neglect, or a com- bination of factors, the single most common finding is that children who end up doing well have had at least one stable and committed rela- tionship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult. These relationships provide the per- sonalized responsiveness, scaffolding, and pro- tection that buffer children from developmental disruption. They also build key capacities—such as the ability to plan, monitor and regulate be- havior, and adapt to changing circumstances— that enable children to respond to adversity and to thrive. This combination of supportive rela- tionships, adaptive skill-building, and positive experiences constitutes the foundations of what is commonly called resilience. Recent discoveries in molecular biology, genomics, and epigenetics provide remarkable What Is Resilience? In the social, behavioral, and biological sciences, the term resilience is used in a variety of ways and contexts—some- times as an individual characteristic, sometimes as a process, and sometimes as an outcome. Despite these differences, there is a set of common, defining features of resilience that illustrates how the concept has been used in research and intervention sciences. These features include the following: 1. The capacity of a dynamic system to adapt success- fully to disturbances that threaten its function, viability, or development.8 2. The ability to avoid deleterious behavioral and phys- iological changes in response to chronic stress.18 3. A process to harness resources to sustain well-being.76 4. The capacity to resume positive functioning follow- ing adversity.77 5. A measure of the degree of vulnerability to shock or disturbance.78 6. A person’s ability to adapt successfully to acute stress, trauma, or more chronic forms of adversity.11 7. The process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress.79 Whether it is considered an outcome, a process, or a capacity, the essence of resilience is a positive, adaptive response in the face of significant adversity. It is neither an immutable trait nor a resource that can be used up. On a biological level, resilience results in healthy development be- cause it protects the developing brain and other organs from the disruptions produced by excessive activation of stress re- sponse systems. Stated simply, resilience transforms poten- tially toxic stress into tolerable stress. In the final analysis, resilience is rooted in both the physiology of adaptation and the experiences we provide for children that either promote or limit its development. 2 Strengthening the Foundations of Resilience WWW.DEVELOPINGCHILD.HARVARD.EDU NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL ON THE DEVELOPING CHILD new insights into the underlying causal mecha- nisms that explain how supportive relationships build the capacities to deal with adversity. This rapidly advancing research frontier demon- strates that resilience is the result of multiple interactions among protective factors in the social environment and highly responsive bio- logical systems. These findings provide an op- portunity to examine how current policies and programs could be enhanced to produce more favorable life outcomes for disadvantaged children, both by reducing their exposure to sources of adversity and by designing better ways of building their coping skills and adap- tive capacities. The answer to this challenge begins with extensive scientific evidence that the develop- ment of healthy brain architecture is influenced by consistent, “serve and return” interactions between young children and their primary caregivers.1 When these experiences are un- available or repeatedly disrupted, the body perceives their absence as a serious threat, and activates its stress response systems. Although the immediate effects of the stress response are protective, its excessive or prolonged activation produces physiological changes that can have a wear and tear effect on the developing brain, cardiovascular system, immune function, and metabolic regulatory systems—in short, it be- comes toxic stress.2,3 In contrast, when respon- sive interactions with caring adults are provid- ed or restored, stress response systems return to their normal baselines, the developing brain and other maturing organ systems are pro- tected from disruption, and children are helped to develop the coping skills needed to deal with adversity. The net result of these protective ef- fects is that what could have been a toxic stress experience for a child becomes what we call “tolerable stress.” One way to understand the development of resilience is to visualize how protective experi- ences and adaptive skills both counterbalance significant adversity and produce positive out- comes. This can be illustrated through the con- cept of a balance scale or perhaps a seesaw or teeter-totter (see box). In this model, resilience is evident when a child’s health and develop- ment are tipped in the positive direction, even when a heavy load of negative factors is stacked on the other side. Understanding all of the in- fluences that might tip the scale in the positive direction is critical to devising more effective strategies for promoting healthy development in the face of significant disadvantage. over the past few decades, there have been numerous longitudinal studies of children’s de- velopment under conditions of adversity that typically lead to toxic stress responses. The power of this research lies in the compilation of rich datasets from the same individuals over an extended period of time, often beginning at birth or even prenatally and, in some instances, continuing well into adulthood. Many of these studies have identified a subset of children whose life outcomes were remark- ably positive despite their exposure to a variety of adverse experiences that typically produce increased risks for impairments in learning, behavior, and both mental and physical health. Gaining a greater understanding of how and why these unexpected outcomes happen is help- ing to build a more robust science of resilience. This science can stimulate fresh thinking about how to enhance the life prospects of all chil- dren—especially those living in environments that can prompt toxic stress responses. The ob- servations and evidence described in the follow- ing sections provide a strong first step toward achieving that goal. Resilience results from a dynamic interaction between internal predispositions and external experiences. Children who do well in the face of significant disadvantage typically exhibit both an intrinsic resistance to adversity and strong relationships with the important adults in their family and community. Indeed, it is the inter- action between biology and environment that builds the capacities to cope with adversity and overcome threats to healthy development.4-10 Resilience, therefore, is the result of a combina- tion of protective factors—and neither individu-