ISSUE 30, AUG/SEP 2011

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active ed

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tion ISSU

E 30, JAUG

/SEP 2011

ISSN 1836-9758

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AUSTRALIA’S LEADING RESOURCE FOR PHYSICAL, OUTDOOR AND HEALTH EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS

Building Resilience For Life:Creating Children Who Are Strong, Not Tough

Building Resilienc e For Life: Creating Children Who Are Str ong, Not Tough

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By Dr Paula Barrett and Dr Clayton CookBuilding Resilienc e For Life:

Creating Children Who Are Str ong, Not Tough

In a recent conference in Brisbane, the Dalai Lama spoke about the prevention of mental and physical illness. He

emphasised the importance of including resilience programs in all levels of schooling. These programs, he argued, should focus on social-emotional skills, particularly the development of empathy and compassion towards living things.

The term ‘resilience’ has become increasingly topical in research circles and popular culture. A growing number of children and adults develop mental health problems in response to life’s stressors; resilience is the ability to not only bounce back from adversity but to also grow from overcoming these challenges. To be resilient means to go through the daily ups and downs and to feel strong, enjoying life and relationships with others and maintaining a positive outlook.

Resilience can be understood on a continuum. On one end of the continuum is a small group of individuals who have high levels of resilience and who seem to be able to withstand the majority of life’s stressors. On the other end is a small group of individuals who exhibit distress to even the slightest of adverse circumstances. Most people, however, are in the middle and demonstrate an average level of resilience. Stress and hardship is a common life experience and everyone can struggle from

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time-to-time. So no matter where someone falls in the continuum, they can benefit greatly from skills that enhance their level of resilience.

We can think broadly about two groups of children who are unable to demonstrate resilience. The first group represents roughly one in five children who are born with a temperamental sensitivity. These children react quickly and strongly to aversive stimuli, and stay emotionally aroused and distressed for long periods of time. In turn, this temperamental sensitivity places children at high risk for developing anxiety (and, in adolescent years, depression), within the first few years of school.

Anxiety includes signs such as excessive worry, difficulty in dealing with change, not being able to fall asleep at the beginning of the night, shyness, perfectionism, psychosomatic complaints, and an avoidance of challenging situations. Depression often entails the following cluster of experiences: sadness, loss of interest and enjoyment in an activity, irritability, hopelessness, helplessness, early morning awakening and social withdrawal. Children exhibiting early anxiety and/or depression will continue to experience emotional distress into adolescence and adulthood unless they learn resilience life skills and coping strategies. They do not ‘grow out of it’.

This is troubling, considering that the presence of anxiety and/or depression has been linked with a wide range of negative; experiences including bullying (whether as victims or perpetrators); behavioural problems; learning difficulties; absenteeism; drug and alcohol use, and adult mental health problems and unemployment. Given the risk associated with temperamental sensitivity, a ‘psychological vaccine’ is needed, otherwise children with this predisposition will remain at high risk. Early and ongoing resilience programming teaches the social-emotional skills such children need to manage their emotions and be optimistic.

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The other four out of five children are not born with temperamental sensitivity but they can become distressed under severe experiences, such as bullying, family difficulties or exposure to traumatic events. This group might also develop anxiety and depression in response, which then places them equally at risk. All children, not just those with a temperamental sensitivity, can benefit from being taught social-emotional skills.

It is important that evidence-based resilience programs are adopted. ‘Evidence-based’ refers to practices or programs that are supported by high-quality scientific research and that have been replicated independently by someone other than the developers of the program. These programs need to work, otherwise the time, money, and energy invested in them is unlikely to produce a result. Thankfully, in Australia, we are very lucky to have homegrown evidence-based resilience programs.

The life skills emphasised in resilience programs range from age-appropriate awareness and understanding of feelings

to empathy for all living beings, relaxation, mindfulness, self-soothing and self-regulation strategies. These include learning how to pay attention with all senses to the positive stimuli; changing unhelpful to helpful thinking; forming support networks; planning how to face challenges in a gradual manner; and choosing powerful role models in their families or local communities. It is also critical that parents and siblings get involved, allowing for coaching, modeling and feedback, which helps children practise and use these skills in environments other than just school.

Resilience skills are straightforward to teach and can be integrated easily into a school’s curriculum as the basic structure remains the same across school levels; it is the content that is adapted to the particular needs of each group. For pre-school children, for example, games and storytelling are often used as teaching mediums. In primary school and high schools, website postings and support groups, daily journals, drama courses, outdoor activities and physical education can be used. Below are

some activities that you do with primary and secondary aged students.

The red and green balloon game teaches younger students how to change ‘red thinking’ (negative thinking) into ‘green

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thinking’ (positive thinking). Give each child in the class either a red or green balloon. The children with red balloons are required to say a negative thought such as, “I can not do this” or “I am scared”; the children with green balloons have to change the negative thought into a positive one such as “I can try my best”, “I can be brave and give it a go” or “my friends and my teacher can help” (give examples for the children to base both their red and green thoughts on). This game works in a number of common classroom situations, including learning, sporting and mental challenges. Practise identifying ‘red’ and ‘green’ thoughts as much as possible in the classroom, and be a role model when it comes to turning ‘red’ thoughts into ‘green’ ones.

Another example of a great resilience building game for the four- to seven-year-old age group is making ‘relaxation milkshakes’. Give each of your students a plastic cup filled with water (fill the glass one-third of

the way) and a plastic straw. Teach children to blow slowly into the straw for a long time so that small bubbles are made in the water. These are relaxation milkshakes, and they teach children that slow and deep breathing makes them feel calm and relaxed.

For primary aged students, try using role-plays that relate to different feelings to encourage discussion about the all the feelings that people experience, and the types of things that people commonly do when they are experiencing these feelings. Get each student to think of a feeling and then role-play it using actions and facial expressions (without using words). The other students in the class are then required to guess what the feeling is by judging the types of actions and emotions the person is portraying. After the role-plays, discuss all the different feelings that have been demonstrated (including any that might have been missed out) and ensure that you explain that all types of feelings are normal

and OK. Students must understand that it is what they choose to do with those feelings that matters most.

Students must also understand that their bodies give off particular signs when they are experiencing certain feelings. It is crucial that students learn these signs so that when they experience certain feelings, they know how they can calm themselves down and relax. There are body signs for all types of feelings, such as your heart beating faster than usual when you feel nervous about something. By learning what these signs are, and how to indentify these signs in their own bodies, students will understand how to cope with all the feelings they feel and remain strong and confident that what they are experiencing is normal and, most importantly, that it is OK.

Resilience activities and programs play a crucial role in the development of teenagers and should be implemented right through the secondary years to prepare students for

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what they face while they are still in school and when they leave secondly school. One such activity is to encourage students to think about the areas in their lives they could improve on and establish a set of goals that will help them improve in that area. The goals do not have to be big; they could be things such as planning ahead for exams, working well in a group, helping one person every day, smiling more often, eating healthier food or exercising more. Once students have set their goals, encourage them to think about past achievements that began as new challenges and were probably daunting at first. Get your students to think about these times and how they overcame the challenging aspects of the task to achieve the goals and succeed. The experience of remembering and analysing will help them to achieve the new goals they have set.

Another great warm-up activity for secondary-age students is to organise the class into small groups at the beginning of a lesson and dedicate 10 or so minutes in which they are to share one or two positive, fun or happy events that they have recently experienced. After they have done this, ask them to share a challenging or difficult situation that they have experienced, and also how they coped with that situation and managed to overcome the challenge behind

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it. Students should always be encouraged to talk about their feelings and their experiences so they understand that what they are feeling is normal and OK.

People of all ages can benefit and become emotionally stronger by taking part in a resilience program. Take learning to swim: most of us learn to swim so that we can enjoy the experience of being in the water and avoid drowning. Similarly, if we learn to be competent ‘swimmers’ in social and emotional situations, we are going to thrive as human beings in any circumstance. Learning to be resilient has been shown to improve work productivity, family relationships and overall life happiness.

As James Hackerman (who won the Nobel Prize for Economy in 2005) proved through the development of a social economical model: “human capital investment in the form of social and emotional school curriculum, is the best investment we can make for lifelong family and society wellbeing and to save long term health and work productivity costs”. The value of empathy and emotional resilience has also been validated by recent neurological research – neuroscientists have discovered that the brain undergoes the same degree of suffering when exposed to emotional trauma as it does when the body

endures physical pain. On the other hand there are also many scientific accounts of the brain’s continuous growth through daily physical exercise and an engagement with lifelong social and emotional skills development.

Leaders and educators must embrace a paradigm shift in their approach to wellbeing and happiness and take a proactive stance to teaching students how to be resilient. We learn to swim so that we do not drown in deep water, but we need to place the same emphasis on teaching individuals, families and communities how to be resilient.

Countries such as Canada and the United States are currently undergoing this paradigm shift and many schools in these countries are adopting resilience programs. As in Australia, considerable number of children in Canada and the United Sates suffer from anxiety and depression and are involved in severe accidents of bullying. Here in Australia, the new outdoor education national curriculum represents a unique opportunity for resilience programs to be integrated into the framework of Australian schools. There is no reason not to include resilience programs in schools across the country today.

Paradigms shifts in education and health are paramount. It is time to embrace

preventative interventions and resilience training, regardless of their age or life circumstances.

A full list of references is available upon request to editorial@australianmediagroup.com.

Dr Clayton Cook is an assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Dr Cook has published numerous articles on the topic of school-based mental health. He also consults with several school systems in the United States on developing and implementing multi-tiered systems of support that promote resilience and mental health.

Dr Paula Barrett is one of the world’s leading psychologists in the area of prevention and treatment of childhood anxiety and depressive disorders. She is currently a professor at the University of Queensland’s School of Education, has written more than 160 articles in peer-reviewed journals and her research is highly cited internationally. Dr Barrett is also the director of the innovative research-based Brisbane clinic, Pathways Health and Research Centre. For more information, visit www.pathwayshrc.com.au.

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