roots of resilience

Here is a place to explore ways to improve the social-emotional roots of young children and families – yours or ones with whom you work.  It’s about surviving and thriving in everyday moments, from breakfast to bedtime.  It’s about creating roots of healthy relationships and fertile ground for confidence and learning.

Resilience is the ability to recover easily from difficulties. It develops in our early childhood and throughout our lives.  There are 3 areas of development that form a good foundation for life learning:

1. Young children and their adults forming responsive, positive relationships,
2. Adults and children appropriately expressing and managing a variety of emotions,
3. Adults supporting their young children to successfully explore a variety of environments.

For a great little guide to understanding and developing healthy relationships in a young family, click here:

http://www.kaimh.org/Websites/kaimh/images/A_Guide_for_Families_with_Children_Birth-8_Years_420515_7.pdf

Good mental health and resilience allows us to enjoy our lives more, as parents and as children!  Healthy family relationships make it easier to avoid addictions, to pay attention, to participate in school, work, and play, and to develop satisfying relationships as we mature.  Infants and toddlers develop their resilience based on the way the biology they were born with (genes, brain wiring, temperament) is shaped by what they experience (parenting styles, trauma, family routines.) We can’t do much to change genetics or temperament, but we can learn to create experiences in our everyday family moments that foster resilience.  I don’t know of a more powerful way to help young families grow and bloom.  And guess what…babies with healthy social-emotional development have brains and bodies that are more available to learn all the things we want to teach them!