Parent's Eye View: Oct. 22: Resilience is Needed to Navigate Stressful World

When I think about the people I most admire and like to be around, they are the people who are most resilient.

When life knocks down these resilient types, rather than whine, complain, and fall apart, they brush themselves off and get back up, determined to rise above and beyond the obstacles in their path.

This is most likely because they've been supported in developing an internal ability to problem-solve and the flexibility and confidence to not only cope, but excel, in life.

Professionals who work with children are more and more realizing the importance of fostering resilience in youth, which is why the Community Coalition for Children (CCC) has invited Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, author of Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Your Child Roots and Wings, to speak at its annual forum on Monday, Oct. 26 at the Garde Arts Center in New London.

The program is free and open to parents, educators, mental health professionals, and anyone who serves the needs of children, says CCC Director Loren Sterman of Guilford.

An associate professor of pediatrics, a doctor of adolescent medicine at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, author of three books on parenting issues, and the father of teenaged twin boys, Ginsburg's vast professional and personal experiences with kids have inspired him to develop what he calls the "7 Crucial C's" needed to bounce back from challenges and manage stress: competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control. His concepts have been especially helpful to military children dealing with relocation and their parents' deployment.

"This is a very timely topic," says Sterman, who is a clinical social worker at The Williams School in New London and has a private practice in Guilford. "We're creating perfectionist kids, who, when things aren't perfect, have no strategies to deal with it. We're inculcating them with this drive to be the best, to get into the best colleges. [Dr. Ginsburg's] message is the same message I give parents I work with in my practice-help kids to be able to operate with an internal locus of control."

In a recent phone interview, Ginsburg said his talk would be about "figuring out how parents and communities can build strong youth who are able to bounce back from difficulty and are prepared to lead us into the future.

"Adolescent medicine used to be about what kids were doing wrong and trying to change that behavior," he points out. "But it's much more effective to build on their strengths and support them to do the right thing. Parents and communities are key to young peoples' ability to develop the strengths to [handle] life's challenges."

The Community Coalition will provide handouts at the program that explain the "7 C's" and suggest how parents can build on them.

"Adults can actually do things that undermine kids' internal resilience, like scheduling so much that they don't have time to play," Ginsburg says. "Childhood's a natural tool for resilience-how kids figure things out, try on new hats and new roles."

Parents undermine internal resilience in older kids, he says, by "talking to kids in a way they can't understand, like lecturing them and not allowing them to develop their own solutions.

"For children and adolescents to learn healthy coping strategies," Ginsburg adds, "they need models who use healthy strategies, rather than reaching for the quick, easy fixes. Remember that sometimes our actions speak so loudly, our teens can't hear the words we say."

Ginsburg, along with other area professionals, will be working with middle and high school students at Connecticut College the day after his lecture, facilitating a workshop titled "Less Stress…More Success."

"We'll be looking at sources of stress and help [the students] generate solutions to decrease stress," he explains.

"We think of this as a community conversation," says Sterman. "It's the beginning of a year-long effort to create growth or change in the communities we serve and for educators to go back to their schools and create programming and increase consciousness about this year's topic.

"Hopefully, the students will go back to their schools more aware and will bring back something to share with the kids that weren't [at the workshop]," Sterman continues. "And parents will come away with an action plan and an understanding of how they can best serve their child to become resilient in a world that's increasingly difficult and competitive."

Amy Barry lives and writes in Stony Creek. Email her at aimwrite@snet.net.