Experience is subjective. Some children sail through troubles which could make others fall apart. So what makes the difference between a child who bounces back and a child who doesn't and may even go on to a lifetime of emotional distress and mental health problems? More to the point, how do you raise a child to have the ability to cope with the inevitable stresses of life? The key is "resilience", says Elaine Martin, a counselling psychologist in Dublin who has worked in the area of child-abuse prevention. The resilient child has the capacity to cope with difficulties, to learn from them and to grow through them. Here's a 12-point guide compiled with Martin's help. 1) Temperament: some children are born more resilient than others. Their innate temperaments are intrinsically more adaptable. So, to a degree, it all depends on the baby you are given. 2) Intelligence: thinking skills and a capacity to organise thinking in a logical way are an important part of psychological resilience. In many secondary schools in the US, thinking skills are taught as a separate subject. (In Irish primary schools, the sexual abuse programmes are the closest thing we have to this.) Questions such as: "Is this a good or a bad feeling?" and "Does someone know where I am at all times?" are designed to encourage children to learn to think, to discern and to make judgments. In the home, parents need to promote thinking skills by helping children to think through choices and consequences. Rather than simply saying "no", which does not encourage thinking skills, parents need to invite their children's views and get them to engage in the subject. 3) Physical attractiveness: while it may seem unfair, the reality is that good-looking children are sought out for attention and friendship. When you are attractive to other people who want your company, your social competence develops and self-esteem thrives.
An attractive child has a headstart, but an attractive personality can compensate for a lack of physical attractiveness. Parents can encourage social competence (whether their children are physically attractive or not) by nurturing their children's social relationships, giving children access to friends and helping children resolve rows with friends. 4) Learning to accept positive and negative emotions - in The Heart of Parenthood: How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child (Bloomsbury, £16.99 sterling), John Gottman advises: "Don't try to impose your solutions on your child's problems." Good parents are "emotion coaches" who are willing to tolerate their children's sadness or anger, rather than trying to short-circuit these feelings. Martin says that a good parent is one who is able to live with and accept the full range of a child's feelings, rather than encouraging the child to suppress them. There are key turning points in every child's life where support is needed: "Children have life experiences that bring with them intense emotions - and without support, those experiences can become toxic. When people are left alone with their emotions, they develop mechanisms for coping which can become unhealthy, such as coping by cutting themselves off from all feelings, or coping by focusing on other people's needs and becoming people-pleasers. However, with support, the child can survive these intense emotions feeling intact and well." It's the parents' job to help the child to name the feelings and to talk about them. "A lot of parents want to get the child out of the bad feelings, rather than to be with the child in the bad feelings. If, as a parent, you can bear and put up with a range of emotions in your child, the child can learn that emotions are acceptable and don't have to build up in a toxic way," Martin says. 5) A sense of humour: crucial to helping children put things in perspective. 6) Warmth, participation and unlimited praise: Irish parents tend to be afraid of praising children, for fear they'll put their head above the crowd and get it lopped off, says Martin: "You can't praise your children too much, as long as the praise is linked to something positive they have done."
7) Separate the child from the behaviour: children must not feel that they are only loved when they are on good behaviour. When necessary, let your children know you disapprove of their behaviour, not of them. 8) Create opportunities for your child to experience competence and self-esteem: for a four-year-old, this might be tying a shoelace; at 14 it may be mastering a feeling of belonging in a peer group.
Children need to believe they are capable of being wanted and loved.
9) Nurture a sense of identity: children need coherent stories about themselves, how they came into the world and who they belong to.
10) Let your child have other adults to turn to: a key factor in resilience is having a wide range of attachment figures.
11) Encourage a sense of purpose: having goals promotes resilience, but it is important that these goals come from within the child and are not imposed by the parent.
12) Keep channels of communication open by removing any fear of punishment: help your child to name and identify stressors from a young age and give your child permission to talk about awkward feelings. This will make your child more likely to talk to you about frightening subjects like drugs and sex when they are older.
