Handbook of Resilience in Children

Handbook of Resilience in Children

Edited by

Sam Goldstein University of Utah School of Medicine Salt Lake City, Utah

and

Robert B. Brooks Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts

Springer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Handbook of resilience in children / edited by Sam Goldstein and Robert B. Brooks, p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-306-48571-0 1. Resilience (Personality trait) in children. I. Goldstein, Sam, 1952- II. Brooks, Robert B.

BF723.R46H36 2004 155.4'1824-dc22 2004042176

ISBN 0-306-48571-0

© 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the pubhsher (Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connec­tion with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.

Printed in the United States of America.

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For AUyson, Ryan and Janet. This volume is also dedicated to my uncle, Bemhard Goldstein. Despite an early childhood of significant adversity in World War II Europe, he found the strength and resilience to survive and make a life for himself in America.

S.G.

With love and appreciation to my wife Marilyn, my sons Rich and Doug, my daughters-in-law Cybele and Suzanne, and my grandchildren, Maya, Teddy, and Sophia. You have all added much joy to my life.

R.B.

We would like to express our appreciation to Siiri Leelumes for her confi­dence that we could create the volume we envisioned. Thanks also to the many professionals world wide willing to share their wonderful theories, research and ideas. Finally, this is the nineteenth text Ms. Kathy Gardner has coordinated for the authors, our thesaurus has exhausted its alternatives for thanks, so thanks.

S.G. R.B.

The world we have created is a product of our thinking. If we want to change the world, we have to change our thinking.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

We come into the world equipped with predispositions to learn how to cooperate, to discriminate the trustworthy from the treacherous, to commit ourselves to be trustworthy, to earn good reputations, to exchange goods and information and to divide labor . .. Our minds have been built by self­ish genes but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

MATT RIDLEY

Contributors

Bonnie Aberson, Psy.D., Pediatric neuropsychologist, 9769 S. Dixie Highway, Suite 1025 Pinecrest, Florida 33156

Robert B. Brooks, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts 02478

Tara M. Chaplin, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Wai Chen, Ph.D., MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF, England

Kirby Deater-Deckard, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 94703

Shannon Dowd, M.A., Department of Educational Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588

John Eagle, MSW, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0345

Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854

Robert D. Felner, Ph.D., College of Education and Human Development, Education, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40202

Jane Gillham, Ph.D., Psychology Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102

Shadi Houshyar, M.S., Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520

Linda Ivy, M.S., Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 94703

Sara R. Jaffee, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

IX

X Contributors

Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D., Private Practice, 114 Waltham Street, Suite 17, Lexington, Massachusetts 02421

Howard B. Kaplan, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843

Joan Kaufman, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511

Paul A. LeBuffe, Ph.D., Institute of Clinical Training and Research, The Devereux Foundation, Villanova, Pennsylvania 19085

Marc Mannes, Ph.D., Search Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55413

Ann Masten, Ph.D., Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, MinneapoHs, Minnesota 55455

Nancy Mather, Ph.D., Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721

Jack A. Naglieri, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030

Nicole Ofiesh, Ph.D., Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721

Sarah Parker, Department of Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854

Melissa Pearrow, M.S., Quincy Public Schools, Dedham, Massachusetts 02026

WiUiam Pollack, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts 02478

Karen Reivich, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Richard Rider, Psy.D., Neurology, Learning and Behavior Center, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102

Jennifer L. Rosenblatt, M.S., Department of Psychology, Rutgers, The State University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08904

Irwin Sandler, Ph.D., Program for Prevention Research, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287

Peter Scales, Ph.D., Search Institute, Manchester, Missouri 63021

Martin Seligman, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Arturo Sesma, Search Institute, MinneapoUs, Minnesota 55413

Contributors xi

Susan M. Sheridan, Ph.D., Department of Educational Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588

Myma B. Shure, Ph.D., Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102

Jessica Smith, M.S., Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 94703

Jennifer Taub, Ph.D., Center for Mental Health Services Research, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts 01655

Eric Taylor, Ph.D., Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF, England

Emily E. Werner, Ph.D., Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis, Davis California 95616

Emily B. Winslow, Ph.D., Program for Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287

Sharlene A. Wolchik, Ph.D., Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287

Margaret O'Dougherty Wright, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056

Preface

A five-year-old child watched helplessly as his younger brother drowned. In the same year, glaucoma began to darken his world. His family was too poor to provide the medical help that might have saved his sight. His parents died during his teens. Eventually he found him­self in a state institution for the blind. As an African American he was not permitted to access many activities within the institution, including music. Given the obstacles he faced, one would not have easily predicted that he would someday become a world renowned musician.

This man's name was Ray Charles. His life story, similar to many other individuals who faced great emotional, physical, and environmental adversities exemplifies that some can and do survive and in fact thrive. Yet, many others who encounter similar patterns of problems struggle to transition successfully into their adult lives, often finding themselves adrift in poverty, despair, and psychiatric problems.

A comparison of individuals who overcome numerous obstacles with those who do not invites several intriguing questions. What exactly do the survivors do that enable them to succeed? How do they think? What kinds of experiences do they have that may be absent in the lives of those who are not successful? Are some of these experiences unique to sur­viving in the face of adversity? How much of their survival can be predicted by genetics, parenting, education, mentoring, temperament and/or mental health? In a world in which stress and adversity appear to multiply almost exponentially from one generation to the next, the answers to these and related questions have become increasingly important. This edited volume reflects our efforts to address these questions.

We met by chance at a national conference ten years ago. The first author was speaking about childhood disorders, including Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning Disabilities. The second was discussing his increasing focus on the qualities that appeared to help children at risk overcome adversity. There was an instant connection as we realized after a combined fifty years of clinical practice that the best predictors of children's functional outcome into adulthood lay not in relief of their symptoms but rather in an understanding, appreciation, and nurturance of their strengths and assets.

In the past ten years, our initial connection has evolved into a very close professional and personal friendship. We have spent countless hours elaborating ideas about the impor­tance of a strength-based approach in our work and our lives. We have coauthored three books focusing on the process of resilience across the life span, two texts incorporating the resilience model to help parents of children with problems such as anxiety, learning disabil­ity and anger, and numerous trade and professional articles. We have developed a parenting curriculum for nurturing resilience in children and created an award winning documentary. Throughout this work we have come to realize the importance of thinking, feeling, and behaving in certain ways as a means of successfully and happily negotiating life.

xiv Preface

Increasingly, these qualities of success have found themselves under an umbrella of resilience. A resilient mindset, the ability to cope with and overcome adversity is not a luxury or a blessing possessed by some but increasingly an essential component for all. This emerging field of study, which once focused only upon those who confronted and overcame adversity, has found universal appeal as researchers and clinicians examine how the qualities of resilience may be applied to all individuals, even those who have not experienced significant adversity.

What we have learned and still must learn from studying children who have overcome great hardships can be applied to enhance the life of all children. It is not difficult to under­stand and accept that helping individuals develop such characteristics of resilience as dealing effectively with stress and pressure, coping with everyday challenges, bouncing back from disappointments, adversity and trauma, developing clear and realistic goals, solving problems, relating comfortably with others, and treating oneself and others with respect are important ingredients to a satisfying life. As this volume will attest, numerous scientific studies of children facing great adversity in their lives support the basic premise that resilience is an important and powerful force, worthy of the attention it is receiving. ResiUence appears to explain why some children overcome overwhelming obstacles, sometimes clawing and scrapping their way to successful adulthood while others become victims of their early experiences and environments. Yet, as you will read, there is still much to be understood about the process that mediate and shape resilience.

As we have written elsewhere, our belief as well as the beUef of others in the significance of resiUence emerged slowly. This slow recognition resulted in many children and their fami­lies not being helped as effectively as they might have had a strength-based model been in place. Reflecting on our years of clinical practice, we reaUze that many children suffered because well-meaning parents and professionals expended time and energy to fix deficits rather than giving at least equal weight to building assets. The focus of parents, clinicians, and educators on fixing children's problems is not difficult to understand. As professionals we came by this bias honestly. It is how we were trained. We were taught to identify that which is different in a negative way and prescribe interventions to reduce symptoms or problems.

The professional field has come to increasingly realize that this "deficit model" is fine for identifying how and why individuals are different, even for prescribing strategies to improve those differences. However, we now believe and are setting out to scientifically demonstrate, that our highest goal, namely, to improve the future of all children, is best accomplished by identifying and harnessing their strengths and shaping resilient qualities. The deficit model has fallen far short in helping to achieve this goal. Symptom relief has simply not been found to be robustiy synonymous with changing long-term outcome. We have come to appreciate the qualities of resilience examined scientifically in this volume can in fact protect and insulate not only children at risk but all of us.

We are extremely honored by the interest and willingness of our authors to contribute to this volume. They represent a great diversity of backgrounds and research interests but share a vision of the importance of understanding and harnessing the power of resilience. Part I begins with eight background chapters. We offer a basic overview of resilience and reasons why resilience should be studied. Other authors describe resilient processes, the basic concept of resilience, and the processes of resilience differentially between genders. Margaret Wright and Ann Masten provide a comprehensive review of the study of resilience and its advancement through three major waves of research over the past three decades. Kirby Deater-Deckard and colleagues offers an integrated review of the resilience literature, offering a biopsychosocial perspective. This theme is exemplified in a translational framework in Chapter 12 as Shadi Houshyar and Joan Kaufman provide an

Preface xv

ovendew of resilience in the maltreated child. Bill Pollack and Judy Jordan provide an overview of resilience in males versus females. We are exceptionally pleased that Emmy Werner, one of the earliest and most renowned researchers in the area of resilience, provides an overview of what we have learned from large scale, longitudinal studies about resilience. Finally, Part I concludes with a chapter by Jack Naglieri and Paul LeBuffe bringing their expertise in discussing the current science in measuring resilience and the prospective future of evaluating resilience in clinical practice.

Part II continues with a section on environmental issues, including poverty, domestic violence and mental illness in parents, families as contexts for children's adaptation, and children as victims. Part III applies resilience as a phenomenon in more traditionally defined clinical disorders, including delinquency and other disruptive disorders, depression as it relates to learned helplessness, learning disability, and youth with impaired self-con­trol. Jane Gilliam, Karen Reivich, Tara Chaplin, and Martin Seligman discuss their work at the University of Pennsylvania and the increasing focus on resilience as a means of creating an optimistic mindset and effective functioning in the face of stress. Part IV represents our efforts at beginning to create an applied psychology of resilience. A number of authors focus on the ways in which resilience theory can be used to enhance parenting, build self-esteem, provide educational opportunity, reduce school wide violence, and improve effec­tive thinking. Emily Winslow, Irwin Sandler, and Charlene Wolchik describe a program to build resilience in all children through a public health approach. Maurice Elias, Sarah Parker, and Jennifer Rosenblatt describe a model to facilitate educational opportunity as a means of strengthening resiUence. Jennifer Taub and Melissa Pearrow describe schoolwide violence prevention programs as a means of strengthening resilient outcomes.

This volume will address which and by what processes variables within the child, immediate family, and extended community interact to offset the negative effects of adver­sity, thereby increasing the probability of positive development rather than dysfunction. Some of these processes likely reflect genetically inherent phenomena. Others, involve the interaction of genetics and immediate environment, while still others reflect the impact of the extended environment. Some of these processes may serve to protect against the neg­ative effects of stressors while others may simply act to enhance development independent of the presence of stress.

It is our intent that this is the first of many volumes to change the foundation of applied psychology. It is our hope that this volume will provide readers with new ideas and theories, and a more precise way of understanding and helping children. As we wrote in our first jointly authored text. Raising Resilient Children (2001), our worries for our children and their future are well founded. Yet there is reason to be optimistic about counteracting the negative influences in their lives. The new millennium offers unUmited possibilities and unimagined advances. However, we believe strongly the future lies not in technology but in our children, children instilled by their parents, teachers, educators, and other adults with the resilient qualities necessary to help them shape a future with satisfaction and confidence.

S.G. R.B.

REFERENCE

Brooks, R., & Goldstein, S. (2001). Raising Resilient Children. New York: Contemporary Books.

Contents

PARTI. OVERVIEW

1. Why Study Resilience? 3 Sam Goldstein and Robert B. Brooks

2. Resilience Processes in Development 17 Margaret O'Dougherty Wright and Ann S. Masten

3. Understanding the Concept of Resilience 39 Howard B. Kaplan

4. Resilience in Gene-Environment Transactions 49 Kirby Deater-Deckard, Linda Ivy, and Jessica Smith

5. Sustaining and Reframing Vulnerability and Connection: Creating Genuine Resilience in Boys and Young Males 65 Williams. Pollack

6. Relational Resilience in Girls 79 Judith V. Jordan

7. What Can We Learn about Resilience from Large-Scale Longitudinal Studies? 91 Emmy E. Werner

8. Measuring Resilience in Children 107 Jack A. Naglieri and Paul A. LeBuffe

PART II. ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

9. Poverty in Childhood and Adolescence 125 Robert D. Felner

10. Family Violence and Parent Psychopathology 149 Sara R. Jaffee

xvu

xviii Contents

11. Families as Contexts for Children's Adaptation 165 Susan M. wSheridan, John W. Eagle, and Shannon E. Dowd

12. Resiliency in Maltreated Children 181 Shadi Houshyar and Joan Kaufman

PART III. RESILIENCE AS A PHENOMENON IN CHILDHOOD DISORDERS

13. Resilience and the Disruptive Disorders of Childhood 203 Sam Goldstein and Richard Rider

14. From Helplessness to Optimism 223 Karen Reivich, Jane E. Gillham, Tara M. Chaplin, and Martin E. P. Seligman

15. Resihence and the Child with Learning Disabilities 239 Nancy Mather and Nicole Ofiesh

16. Resilience and Self-Control Impairment 257 Wai Chen and Eric Taylor

PART IV. SHAPING THE FUTURE OF CHILDREN

17. Positive Adaptation, ResiUence, and the Developmental Asset Framework 281 Arturo Sesma, Jr., Marc Mannes, and Peter C. Scales

18. The Power of Parenting 297 Robert B. Brooks

19. Building Educational Opportunity 315 Maurice J. Ellas, Sarah Parker, and Jennifer L. Rosenblatt

20. Building Resilience in All Children 337 Emily B. Winslow, Irwin N. Sandler, and Sharlene A. Wolchik

21. Resilience through Violence Prevention in Schools 357 Jennifer Taub and Melissa Pearrow

Contents xix

22. Enhancing the Process of Resilience through Effective Thinking 373 Myma B. Shure and Bonnie Aberson

PARTY. CONCLUSIONS

23. The Future of Children Today 397 Sam Goldstein and Robert B. Brooks

Index 401