Summer 2017 Early Years Bulletin

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Early Years Bulletin

Summer 2017 vol 4 no 4

Focus on Infants & Toddlers editors: Nur Tanyel and Laura Hooks

Fostering Resilience in Infants and Toddlers By Nur Tanyel, University of South Carolina Upstate

Emma was scared. While peeking through her bedroom door, she witnessed her dad beating her mom and saw a splatter of blood. Emma is now living with her grandmother in a new home in a new community. Ahmed, a 3-year-old in another part of the world, was startled by an explosion. As the dust began to settle and Ahmed could breathe again, he tried to comprehend the commotion around him and witnessed his family members, covered in blood, being pulled out of the rubble. He was the only one in his family to survive. He is now living in a refugee camp with another family that has children close to his age.

Y

oung children experience stress and trauma every day. Some children are exposed to abuse, neglect, and separation from loved ones, and some experience community violence and war. While parents and other adults in children’s lives try to keep children safe and protected, it is not always possible to do so. Nevertheless, adults can promote resilience in young children by fostering protective factors that can buffer the negative effects of stress and trauma (Pizzolongo & Hunter, 2011). Children who are born into an environment that provides rich relationships and appropriate expectations with low environmental stress tend to develop the internal resources that allow them to easily cope with environmental demands and become emotionally competent individuals. These children acquire an array of flexible responses that match the intensity of the situation within context (Poulsen, 1993). Furthermore, they recover from stressful events in a period of

time that matches the traumatic event and become resilient. Resilience refers to the child’s capacity to overcome biological, psychological, and environmental stressful events and develop the capacity to overcome adversity and achieve higher-levels of self-esteem and internal harmony. This article examines how adultchild interaction and attachment affects resiliency in infants and toddlers and also explores the personal and environmental characteristics that contribute to resilience. Adult-Child Interaction and Attachment The relationship between biological, environmental, and psychosocial circumstances forms a framework for building resilience in young children. Psychosocial influences that are significant for developing resilience include adult-child relationships, attachment, and goodness-of-fit model. The quality of adult-child interaction in infancy and early childhood is one of the key predictors of later positive interpersonal relationships, social and emotional

Contents p. 5 - Activities for the Classroom p. 8 - Focus on Pre-K & K


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