‘What surrounds us shapes us’: A framework for building children’s resilience to thrive in life introduces the Resilience Scale as a model for understanding the impact of environment and experiences on children’s brain health. Using ARACY’s The Nest framework, it provides examples of what children need to thrive.
Transcript:
When it comes to building resilience, what surrounds us, and happens to us, shapes us.
Safe, stable and supportive family and community connections, responsive services, and safe healthy environments, allow children to build the skills they need to take opportunities and face life’s challenges.
We all have a role to play in ensuring children have these positive relationships and experiences so that they can thrive.
The Nest – Australia’s wellbeing framework for children and young people – shows us that children’s wellbeing is made up of six connected domains: healthy; valued, loved and safe; learning; identity and culture; material basics; and participating.
The Nest framework helps us see what a child needs for wellbeing in themselves, at home, and in their community.
This framework can also help us to understand how we can build children’s resilience.
Throughout life we experience challenges and changes that can impact on our wellbeing.
Resilience helps us adapt to difficult situations and find healthy ways to cope. Resilience is not fixed; it emerges from the experiences and supports we receive, and the skills we learn over time.
One way to think of a child’s resilience is as a scale where positive and negative experiences, skills and abilities, supportive systems, and environments, all influence a child’s capacity for resilience.
At one end of the scale are positive experiences including safe, stable, and supportive relationships and environments.
When children experience these kinds of supportive relationships and environments, they form a strong brain foundation. This allows them to develop the coping skills that enable them to believe ‘I know that good things happen too and that this bad time won’t last forever’.
Negative experiences and adversities are represented at the other end of the scale. These negative experiences and sources of toxic stress can undermine our brain architecture and leave a child vulnerable to long-term physical and mental health issues and other challenges.
The starting position of the base is underpinned by a child’s genetics and environment and can be understood as our initial capacity for resilience.
The starting positions of children’s bases vary, which means that different children will respond to their environment in different ways.
This starting position is not fixed. It can move move over time through experiences and environmental changes like when the child, adults and community learn how to best support the child and family.
By enabling children to build skills and abilities across time we can shift the base towards a more resilient position.
A child’s family and circumstances influence their wellbeing in powerful and long lasting ways.
Children and families also need a supportive community around them to help them thrive.
Support may come from their neighbourhood, clubs, school, through connection to community and culture, and from services and systems they interact with.
The places where children live, learn and play are also key. For example, healthy environments, stable housing, and responsive systems all support children’s wellbeing and resilience.
When children are supported to work through stress and challenges they can develop the skills and abilities to improve their resilience over time. In this way stress can be a healthy part of development.
Without support, adversities can become toxic, particularly when they are multiple, prolonged and are not buffered by safe, stable relationships. This can tip a child’s scale towards a negative outcome and shift their base, making it harder for them to cope with life’s obstacles.
Without help to make meaning of these experiences, children can start to feel hopeless and blame themselves for what’s happened, which can also lead to changes in their behaviour.
Having access to professionals and services that are trauma-informed and developmentally-aware helps to protect and buffer children from the impact of adverse experiences. They can help children to question and challenge negative self-beliefs and provide them with the supports they need to strengthen and build their resilience.
The Nest wellbeing framework can help us to think about the different positive and adverse experiences that a child may have, and the environments around them, and to identify opportunities for support.
For example, a positive experience in the healthy domain might be a child having access to safe outdoor spaces to play or participate in sports they enjoy. Having a family member who has a chronic health condition may be experienced as an adversity. When a challenge occurs having a local community health team may be a support.
An important part of the participating domain is that children feel heard. A positive experience may be access to an adult in the child’s life who makes time to listen and encourages them to express themselves. An adversity might be not feeling heard. If there’s conflict within their family or challenges at school, having skills and opportunities to share how they’re feeling can support a child’s resilience in this domain.
When a child’s family has material basics, secure work, nutritious food, appropriate clothing and safe housing, it adds to their positive experiences. Changes in this domain like housing stress or financial strain can become a negative experience and tip the child’s scale.
We all play an important part in supporting children’s resilience by providing them with positive experiences and environments.
When families professionals, communities and decision-makers come together to promote children’s development and wellbeing, we can nurture happier healthier and more resilient children and families, now and in the future.
