Resilience - From me to you

There are words we often hear thrown around in the news, in research and in conversation, and resilience is certainly one of those recently. But what does is really mean? And how should we be considering it in practice within early years? I undertook some research last year with multiagency professionals to explore just that. What I found was that we all conceptualise resilience in our own way – and so we must consider how it is relevant to our roles and responsibilities.

The word ‘resilience’ is said to derive from the Latin verb resalire, meaning to ‘jump back’ (Mukherjee and Kumar 2017). Throughout the course of my research, I came to define the term as: the ability to overcome negative circumstances or occurrences and maintain healthy functioning, both on an individual level and within the contexts of social environments.

Children can go through many life challenges in a short space of time; some more than others. Starting nursery, having a new sibling, moving to a new house are experienced by many young children, and there are those who also experience trauma, such as witnessing domestic violence, and being the victim of abuse themselves. These occurrences will require a child to draw upon their emotional resilience.

NATURE VS NURTURE

While some children can thrive through change and challenge, others are impacted greatly. The age-old question of nature vs nurture cannot be ignored here, and while some commentators on resilience conceptualise it as solely an internal trait, others believe it is developed from the environment.

There are arguments that support both viewpoints, as we all know some babies are easier to soothe than others. This could be understood as in-built temperament; the genetic blueprint of personality. However, the environment that a baby grows up in has been shown to have a profound impact on infant brain development, and ultimately the outcomes for that child.

My research found that almost all professionals believed it is the interaction between internal and external factors that contribute to a child’s resilience level. It was also identified that all professionals conceptualised resilience as changeable; something that can fluctuate over time.

My research suggests that the two key factors promoting a child’s resilience are a stable home environment and a support network. This links closely with the role of early years settings, in the way we connect with those who are significant to the child, as well as the sense of community and shared vision that we create for families.

Bringing parents and carers along on the journey of facilitating children’s growth and learning is something that was apparent in the EPPE project (Sylva et al2003), which showed that the quality of parental involvement has a considerable impact on a child’s outcomes, more so than the presence of adversity.

Emotional literacy and positivity featured highly in the professionals’ responses to my research question on how best to support children’s resilience. Helping children understand their emotions from as early an age as possible was, therefore, seen as directly linked to building resilience.

We often offer this support automatically – labelling how we think a child may feel, relating our own experiences to a child’s to show empathy, and modelling coping strategies. However, children will often find their own way of coping with difficult times, such as playing out scenarios with toys in order to make sense of things, seeking attention or withdrawing from interaction. These are often signs that a child is experiencing difficulties in adjusting to a change or negative experience and that we need to offer support.

OFFERING SUPPORT

To foster a child’s resilience when facing difficulties:

Acknowledge and validate a child’s feelings by labelling the emotion. Emotional literacy skills are developed throughout childhood, so a young child may often be confused by what they feel. This can feel scary for a child, especially if it causes them to behave out of character. Children therefore need adults to help them name their emotions.

Help a child to make sense of the situation by narrating in simple language what the issue may be. As a child may not be able to identify why they feel the way they do, they will need trusted adults to help them understand why they are experiencing their emotions.

Role-model positivity. Children learn through social referencing; by looking to trusted adults for guidance on how to respond to situations, particularly those that may be scary. Children can feel secure and more able to manage situations if caregivers are calm, positive and proactive in finding solutions to problems.

Talk about change. Often the fear of the unknown is the most worrying thing. Talking about what is going to happen step by step in creative ways, such as playing things out with toys or drawing, can help children to connect with their reality.

ADULT RESILIENCE: WHAT ABOUT US?

Working with children in the care and education sector can be tough and draining. A 2012 study found that 42 per cent of professionals working with children and families described themselves as ‘burnt out’ (Aitken et al, Grant and Kinman 2013).

Children can be impacted by staff members’ low levels of resilience, perhaps caused by high staff turnover and its knock-on effects to a setting’s key worker system, which promotes positive attachments, security and, in turn, resilience.

My research showed that professionals often felt:

• resilience is transactional – it can be transferred from one person to another
• better able to pass on resilience to children, families and colleagues when they themselves were feeling resilient.

Gifting our resilience to another person – and sustaining a resilient workforce – depends on empathy, active listening, effective communication and a supportive environment.

Promoting resilience in the workplace

Regular supervision

This is vital to addressing any personal issues that may be impacting staff well-being and identifying high levels of workload stress before it impacts the children. Supervisions that cover both professional practice and personal well-being are most effective and support a holistic approach to the needs of early years practice.

Workplace culture

A culture that recognises resilience as being fundamental to high-quality practice will instil a sense of care and nurture in staff teams – things that we aim to pass onto the children and families we work with. This ultimately comes from management disseminating a shared vision and holding regular team meetings.

Resilience training

A better understanding of resilience may help staff to identify their own resilience promoters, see how resilience impacts their work and make them more aware of how to promote resilience in the children they care for.

A culture of collaboration

I developed a model that aims to build a culture of collaboration in the workplace and so create the conditions in which ‘resiliency transactions’ can occur between professionals and the children, young people and families that they support. This culture rests on four key elements:

• A multi-agency workforce that is trained and knowledgeable about how to promote resilience
• The potential for each team member’s understanding of resilience to have influence.
• A shared vision among teams who give families overarching messages of respect and empowerment in literature, documentation and face-to-face communication.
• Effective management of change within organisations, to maintain as much as possible a state of equilibrium among teams, so increasing staff well-being and the potential for resilience transactions with families.

These transactions are hindered or promoted by the quality of:

• colleague mentoring and support
• interfamilial interactions and support.

When both influences are positive and effective, the reciprocal transactions of resilience can occur between professional and family.

Sarah Cox is a family support worker for getset services in the Glastonbury Hub, Somerset. Her research formed part of her childhood studies degree at Yeovil College, Somerset.

FURTHER READING

Clinton J (2008) ‘Resilience and Recovery’, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 13 (3), pp213-222

Coholic D, Eys M and Lougheed S (2012) ‘Investigating the Effectiveness of an Arts-based and Mindfulness-based Programme for the Improvement of Resilience in Children in Need’, Journal of Child & Family Studies, 21 (5), pp833-844

Fletcher D and Sarkar M (2013) ‘Psychological Resilience: A review and Critique of Definitions, Concepts and Theory’, European Psychologist, 18 (1), pp12-23

Gottman J (1997)Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. Simon and Schuster

Linke P (2010) ‘Promoting Resilience in Young Children’, Educating Young Children: Learning and Teaching in the Early Childhood Years, 16 (2), pp35-38