LIVING RESILIENTLY
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Jump to: Guidelines for Promoting resilience in children
On a recent edition of the ABC radio program ‘Life matters’ with Julie McCrossin, child psychologist Dr John Irvine related the story of Tim, a ten-year-old child who tried to hang himself from a shower curtain railing.
Tim, who had a loving and financially sound family background, was devastated because his father had bought him the wrong brand of tennis racquet and had refused to return and exchange it for the ‘cool’ brand.
Absurd as it may sound, situations like Tim’s are becoming increasingly common among children who don’t seem to have the capability to overcome difficult experiences. Health care professionals say that the ability to be resilient is one of the most important elements of positive mental health.
Journalist Anne Deveson is concerned that Australian youth suffers a deficit of resilience and she quotes numerous and alarming statistics to support this. For example, one in 40 Australian school children is being medicated for an emotional or a behavioural problem—a thirteen-fold increase over the past decade.
In her book, Resilience, Anne quotes Richard Eckersley, a Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health in Canberra, who identifies problems such as increased family conflict and breakdown, youth unemployment, poverty, education pressures, media influence and pessimism about humanity’s future as problems which are ‘denting the natural resilience and buoyancy of youth’.
Anne
(left) says young people are now expressing an absence of meaning in their
lives. She is critical of the short-comings of the churches in addressing
their needs.
‘I think this is where many churches fail people’, she says.
Anne Deveson is a distinguished Australian broadcaster, journalist and documentary film-maker who has devoted much of her life and career to social justice. She has focussed her energies to the issues that confront humanity both from a global perspective as well as those that have impinged on her personal life. She is former Head of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
Anne’s book contextualises, defines and makes accessible a very resonant but under-investigated topic. But she quickly points out to those of us eager to know more about resilience that her book is not written by an expert in the practice of resilience.
‘There are no experts … people do the best they can’, she explains.
This is despite the fact that some chapters of Anne’s life could
be case studies taken straight from a resilience handbook. She has already
written an account of her experience with her schizophrenic son Jonathan,
called Tell me I’m here. While she was researching Resilience
she happened to meet and fall in love with Robert Theobald, a futurist
and international lecturer on resilient communities, who died from cancer
eight months after they met.
‘The acceptance of death as part of life is important’, Anne
says.
She spent three days at a Buddhist wat near Sydney after the death of her son Jonathan, who succumbed to schizophrenia in 1986 at the age of 24 after failing to respond to medication for the seven years of his illness. At the time of his diagnosis at 17, Anne was divorced with two other children to raise.
She said the monk at the wat listened to her explain her grieving and told her it would be hard, but that it was part of the cycle of life and the infinite. She explains: ‘although dying might seem to be the antithesis of resilience, it lies at its very core’.
Her book is very much a ‘tapestry’ of resilience into which she blends three strands. The first is her extensive and wide-ranging research into resilience, the second is the touching narrative of Robert’s death. The third strand is her personal reflection on both of these. In making sense of one she clarifies the other.
‘There are many factors which come into play in regard to resilience, but the more sane people are able to enlist help … environmental factors are important. You can’t look at the individual without looking at the environment. Resilience can be a learned response’, Anne says.
One widely accepted definition of resilience is ‘the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances’. Anne perceives resilience as ‘a cloak of many colours’ possessed by each of us.
‘Resilience is confidence with problem-solving, a sense of engagement with life, curiosity, connectedness.’ She defines resilience as ‘a life force’ connecting everyone.
She gives the example of Janine Shepherd, the former Australian champion cross-country skier, who was critically injured in a road accident in the lead-up to her competition in the 1988 Winter Olympics, thus ending her sporting career. Anne credits her survival with her ‘fighting spirit’. Anne adds: ‘Life is not necessarily a matter of holding good cards, but of being helped to play a poor hand well’.
Anne speaks of spirituality as one of the ingredients of the connectedness that inspires resilience.
‘That sense of connectedness to each other and the universe, whether it be in churches, music or great literature, is profoundly important and gives a sense of belonging.
‘I have a fairly wide-open definition of spirituality’, she states. ‘To me spirituality is a sense of connection to the infinite, the infinite is a mystery, and that’s enough for me.’
She explains that studies have found higher levels of religious faith and spirituality are associated with increased coping skills, greater resilience to stress, an optimistic life orientation, greater perceived social support and lower levels of anxiety.
Anne has always been passionate about social justice. She was a member of the Royal Commission into Human Relationships in the 1970s. She remains concerned about a range of issues including Australia’s ‘reckless’ foreign policy, the use of detention centres for asylum seekers and the removal of free tertiary education in Australia.
‘It’s about giving equal opportunities irrespective of someone’s background’, she says.
Hope is a central theme of Anne’s exploration of resilience.
She says there are a variety of expressions of hope. One of the most moving accounts of resilience in the face of prolonged and horrific suffering has come from the writings of Primo Levi (a young Italian chemist sent to a concentration camp in World War II for criticising fascism).
Anne says Levi survived because he regarded the camp as a gigantic biological
and social experiment, while at the same time salvaging a humane moral
vision from humankind at
its worst. ‘Hope comes from bearing witness and putting some measure
of dignity into each day’, she observes.
Promoting resilience in children
One positive experience, or the influence of one person, (eg. the teacher who believes that a child has talent, the grandmother who is sure that her grandchild will make it) can make a difference to a child’s resilience. There are three main ways that parents and friends can influence and support children.
Caring and support
This means that a child has a close relationship with at least one adult
in the family or extended family environment and that affection is expressed
physically and verbally (that is, the child can hear and see the affection).
High expectations
This means that parents have positive goals for their children and their
future, that they provide routines and rules in a safe and positive way
that helps children grow up understanding how the world works. Parents
also value and encourage the children’s education. This does not
mean setting the bar so high that a child cannot possibly reach it, but
helping a child with realistic and positive goals.
Encouraging children’s participation
This means giving children the opportunity to be involved in a real way
in family activities. This includes deciding on important things such
as holidays and helping with jobs around home. This is about encouraging
children’s independence and helping them take charge of their lives
as they get older.
This information is reproduced with permission from the Headroom website, Division of Mental Health, Women and Children's Hospital, South Australia. For more information visit www.headroom.net.au—go to the Family Room.
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