We hesitate to emphasize the resilience power of hope over all the other personality traits.

– Personality Strengths as Resilience: A One-Year, Multi-wave Study

In other words, I am not the storm; I am not the weather; I am the tree that grew through that and grew stronger and wiser because of it.

– The Conditions for Growth: Resiliency Enabling Approaches for Children and Young People

The world of most children has always been predictable. They go to school, do homework, attend other classes, hang out with friends, participate in co-curricular activities and spend time with their families. Their lives proceeded on a routine and the day-to-day activities did not change much. This could have gone on for years prior to recent events.

Caregivers strive to give them the assurance that things will be the same tomorrow as it is today and to this extent, we can say they live sheltered lives. This is for good reason.

A specialist education psychologist, Juliette Ttofa who has authored a set of seven story books for children with titles like How Monsters Wish to Feel and The Tale of Two Fishes: A Story about Resilient Thinking and whose life work has been to help develop emotionally resilient children says – Children “need to be nurtured by caring, consistent, attuned, emotionally responsive adults within the cocoon of a safe and supportive social environment that affords them the protected time and space in which to grow, individuate and heal”. Juliette Ttofa has also written a very comprehensive guide to fostering resilience in children with a focus on children who have suffered some setback. We will return to this later.

Emotional resilience has become very relevant since children all over the world now have to deal with changes to an extent previous generations did not have to. The goal is to have a shift in mindset that the show must go on regardless. There needs to be a certain flexibility of mind. Goodman and others (2017) say that resilient individuals, “use their goal-oriented flexibility to discover and implement new strategies to find success” when the path they were on appears blocked.

In Nurturing Schools and Colleges, Whole School Approaches to Supporting Mental Health and Emotional Well Being, a report published in Gloucestershire describes the Coronavirus “crisis” as “one of the most challenging times schools have ever faced”, that it is “likely to have affected children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, both now and in the longer-term” and advises a strong focus on promoting emotional well-being which is exactly what education systems around the world are doing.

Emotional resilience is a team effort which requires an ecosystem. To this end, Ttofa’s guide is very handy. For example, she explains when children have been through some shock or emotionally draining experience and are acting up or exhibiting loss of their usual vitality, we should ask them What’s strong in you as opposed to the more intuitive What’s wrong with you. Drawing from resilience research by experts, she has compiled all the collective wisdom in one place.

She relies on the definition of Dr Ann Masten who is a Professor at the Institute of Child Development in the University of Minnesota – resilience is the “capacity of a dynamic system to withstand or recover from significant challenges that threaten its stability, viability, or development”. This definition focuses on a child’s inner resources.

Her guide touches on both reducing the adverse circumstances or stress triggers and equipping children with ways to adapt to difficult situations. It also offers advice on how to get a reticent child to feel comfortable sharing what happened. We will focus just on what to do when a child has suffered some major setback or what the child considers an NLE or negative life event (Goodman et al., 2017).

She prefaces her recommendations by outlining the distinction between trauma and adversity. While the latter is a matter of external circumstances – A experiences a setback, the former is a matter of internal representation and impact – A develops a phobia. Adversity or an NLE would not become trauma if the following six factors are in place for a child; Relationships, Sleep, Exercise, Nutrition, Mindfulness & Mental Health (Harris, 2018, as cited in Ttofa, 2021).

Of these, she places a special emphasis on relationships. According to her, many times adversity turns into trauma because the victim believes he or she is alone in the dark experience. Just having someone else hear and acknowledge what had happened, would help resolve very complex feelings. Trauma professionals go one step further by recontextualising what had happened. She points out though that children who have experienced trauma may have difficulty reaching out even to trusted adults or friends. Trauma specialists explain that such children may automatically construct some protective barrier around them and could “disassociate”. Trusted adults will have to identify and soften these barriers (Ttofa, 2021).

The following is a three-step way to interact with a child who has just experienced something overwhelming or is acting up. It is labelled as the 3R Model (Perry & Ablon, 2019 as cited in Ttofa, 2021).

The 3Rs refer to Regulate, Relate and Reason.

The first R, ‘Regulate’ acknowledges that children differ from adults in that they might find it difficult to handle strong emotions. Part of emotional strength has to do with sitting with strong negative emotions without necessarily imbibing them and children may not know how to do this. The trusted adult’s first task then is to bring a sense of being in a safe, cocoon like space to the child. This will be a prerequisite for any further progress. One way to do this is to reinforce to the child that the child is safe now in a calm, soothing, non-judgemental voice.

The second R, ‘Relate’ pertains to establishing a connection with the child. This involves making the child feel heard and seen. The trusted adult could explain that nothing would shock them and that they are all ears. If the child has acted up in an undesirable way, it includes telling the child that there will be no judgement.

The third R, ‘Reason’ is to help the child contextualise what had happened. This could be in the form of offering a different perspective or sharing the adult’s own relevant life experience. It could be to equip the child with a different lens with which to understand the event. It could also take the form of collective problem-solving where ways of overcoming problems faced are explored.

As Ttofa puts it, just like trees, “the human body not only has an innate tendency towards healing following adversity, but may also grow into something even more remarkable because of it”.

A good talk helps to walk tall.

The Brain Dojo