 PHILIP A. FISHER: Resilience
is not some magical quality.
It's something that
really can be built,
even in difficult circumstances.
W. THOMAS BOYCE: The key
active core ingredient
to building resilience
are the relationships
that kids have to others
who care about them.
JACK P. SHONKOFF:
Of course families
play a very important
role but nobody
raises children in isolation.
We have a huge
amount of research
to show the powerful impacts of
teachers, coaches, other adults
in the community with whom
children have a chance
to develop relationships.
Who play that critical
supportive role
of building resilience.
As a result of responsive
interaction children build
simple skills of coping and
adapting: How to stop crying,
how to regulate your behavior.
Being able to defer
gratification.
LINDA C. MAYES: You have
an adaptive toolkit
that allows you at moments
of stress or challenge
to bring out a number
of potential skills
that allow you to
get through it.
JACK P. SHONKOFF: As children
get older the sophistication
of those skills increases.
Being able to monitor
situations, solve problems.
The way we as a
society can nurture
the development of resilience
is to help communities
to pay more attention to building
the capabilities of the adults
who care for
children and provide
the supports they need to
tip the scales toward more
positive life outcomes.
PHILIP A. FISHER: And
then when communities say,
we wanna be an active part of
crafting the solution to really
understand what's necessary to
produce the resilience
that's when the
ball gets rolling.
JACK P. SHONKOFF:
Resilience building,
capacity building is really
in everyone's interest
and everyone reaps the
benefits when we do that well.
 
