What factors foster resilience in middle childhood?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Throughout middle childhood, children encounter challenging and sometimes threatening situations that require them to cope with psychological stress. Yet only a modest relationship exists between stressful life experiences and psychological disturbance in childhood. Some children manage to overcome school difficulties, family transitions, the experience of war, and child maltreatment. Rather than a preexisting attribute, resilience is a capacity that develops, enabling children to use internal and external resources to cope with adversity. Four broad factors protect against maladjustment: 1. the child's personal characteristics, including an easy temperament and a mastery-oriented approach to new situations; 2. a warm parental relationship; 3. an adult outside the immediate family who offers a support system; and 4. community resources, such as good schools, social services, and youth organizations and recreation centers. Often just one or a few of these ingredients account for why one child is stress-resilient and another is not. Usually, however, personal and environmental factors are interconnected: Each resource favoring resilience strengthens others. For example, safe, stable neighborhoods with family-friendly community services reduce parents' daily hassles and stress, thereby promoting good parenting.