Here be dragons: How personal safety training can promote better outcomes for vulnerable children How do you equip people to deal with an unknown threat in unchartered territory…? Can’t rely on primitive instincts or protocols. Need to give children transferable skills, a tool-kit that help them respond to a complex and changing environment… Does targeted personal safety training work? Katherine Davis et al (2000) – review of 27 studies of child sexual abuse prevention programmes. Effect size = 1.07 (an average child who had been through training performed better than 90% of a group who hadn’t received training). However… David Finkelhor et al (1995) found that such programmes don’t reduce incidents of victimization but noted children who had been through them: • • • • • •
More likely to make disclosures Children felt more confident dealing with victimization What they had done helped protect them Kept the experience from being worse Higher perceptions of self-efficacy Less self-blame
second order level of skills – not the avoidance of threat but the ability to manage threat. How we respond to adversity turns out to be just as crucial, if not more so in determining outcomes for children. Resilience ‘…manifested competence in the context of significant challenges to adaptation or development’ (Marsten and Coatsworth)
Shakespeare: ‘There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so’ The cognitive components of resilience RESILIENCE COMPONENT ONE: SELF-REGULATION a) emotional literacy and self-control Children able to delay on the instant gratification task were… (Shoda 1990)
‘For a child having reliable labels for feelings is the first step towards controlling his or her emotions’ Turning an experience into a concept… gives you cognitive purchase… •
J Metcalfe and his hot / cool systems analysis of delay gratification
•
Findings that borderline personalities find it harder to identify emotions accurately
b) Problem-solving skills also linked to better self-control: Joffe et al. (1990) Conduct disordered adolescents generated fewer solutions and less able to use assertive strategies to resolve social problems. c) Assertive communication enhances self-control: – assertive people are used to getting their needs met. – assertiveness defuses interaction as conflict: negotiation is not a war of words. – assertive people realise that a calm presentation is ultimately more likely to be effective The way we communicate not only affects the way others see us but how we see ourselves RESILENCE COMPONENT TWO: MASTERY Kaui longitudinal study of resilient individuals ‘Though not unusually gifted, the resilient children used whatever skills they had effectively…’ Emmy Werner 1993 Resilient subjects had: • • •
Positive self-concept Internal locus of control Achievement-oriented
Contrast with cognitions associated with trauma: – – – –
I am incapable I am helpless, I am vulnerable I have no power
If self-regulation is about being overwhelmed from inside, mastery is about not being overwhelmed from the outside… a) Emotional literacy and mastery Learning about through world through our emotional connections to others NB ‘Implicit knowledge’ Cultivating emotional awareness is essential because it sensitises children to important information that might otherwise be ignored or mislabelled. – Dr Eileen Munroe… integrating intuition and analysis in child protection – Early Warning Signs
– Example of the Wise King script Michiko Koizumi and Haruto Takagishi: RMET Scores lower for abused children…. Why? Hard to say – number of possibilities but there does appear to be a link between lowered emotional literacy and vulnerability to victimization experiences. Empathy is a crucial source of information about the environment… the ability to project ourselves into the shoes of others helps us to understand their motivations and intentions:
“The empathic understanding of the experience of other human beings is as basic an endowment of man as his vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell” (Kohut 1997) b) problem solving and mastery ‘There’s nothing as practical as a good theory’ (Kurt Lewin) Superior problem-solving skills produce better results and develop selfefficacy – better results build a sense of yourself as capable However, probably just as important is the way problem-solving experiences change our beliefs around the signficncne of not knowing and even experiencing a temporary loss of power…. • • • •
Problem-solving involves phases of being relatively powerless Power is not ‘all or nothing’ Temporary loss of power is not the same as helplessness It can take time to structure useful cognitive models
True mastery paradoxically involves exploration of the limits of power– Risking on purpose… testing yourself against the environment in order to understand your limits and capacities… Developing a sense of robustness… c) Assertive communication and mastery By enhancing an individual’s communication skills, assertiveness training can increase the feeling of self-efficacy – the belief an individual has that they can reach their goal. In other words, learning to assert yourself can help self-belief and self-confidence. – Carol Craig Children who have self-esteem are less likely to be targeted… more likely to access resources when they are… Abused (disenfranchised) individuals characterised by lack of assertiveness in their relationships:
‘Low self-esteem is profound and common in children who have been emotionally abused and it can manifest in low self-confidence and selfefficacy and a view of the self as less likely to be liked and appreciated by others. Over time such self-doubt is evident in interactions with others and an inability to stand up for one’s self. This can also be observed in peer relationships, romantic relationships as well as in relationships and interactions with their own children’ (Iwaniec 2000).
RESILIENCE COMPONENT THREE: RELATEDNESS ‘… the most important single survival factor was the presence of at least one person who gave unconditional positive regard, who thought well of them and made them feel important’ (Iwaniec 2006) Why are other people so important in helping moderate the impact of trauma and adversity? It’s how we’re wired…. – Pat Crittenden points out that attachment behavior is a response to threat… – Our connections allow access to the resources of others (network Review) – The Other can protect the ‘good’ self when it is eroded or compromised. Assertiveness – not just about resisting the incursions of others but also protecting relationships by maintaining harmonious, transparent, authentic communication. ‘Being assertive means clear, honest and direct communication of positive and negative thoughts, feelings and opinions while, at the same time, respecting the rights, opinions and feelings of the other person’. – Carol Craig Problem-solving and relatedness Social problem-solving oilds the wheels of our social inetractions – modeling the world in ways that relevant connections can be maintained and unhelpful ones terminated… Webster Stratton study 2001: children through the Incredible years Dinosaur group social skills and problem-solving curriculum: • • •
Significantly fewer externalizing problems at home, Less aggression at school, More pro-social behavior with peers,
•
More positive conflict management strategies…
Conclusion
All 3 components of resilience have a crucial cognitive dimension – Protective behaviours help children and their parents generate and maintain helpful and adaptive meanings/interpretations of themselves and the world – they rehearse children in making meanings that have a genuine safeguarding function. Getting better at modeling the world may sometimes alert children to threat, and even help them avoid it, but when that is not possible, protective behaviours can still help children manage the cognitive impact of adversity – giving them skills that generate helpful meanings that are less toxic, less traumatizing and which give them the ability to bounce back when life proves challenging.
It’s no coincidence that the dragons on the medieval maps inhabited the unchartered territories…. What you don’t know and therefore cannot process or organise effectively in your mind is always going to seem threatening and dangerous, and perhaps rightly so. What protective behaviours offer are the cognitive resources to make sense of and process new experience in ways that leave us less emotionally vulnerable. They may not make the external world safer, but can make the internal world a much more secure, robust and well-resourced place to inhabit. If the early explorers had been scared off by the dragons we would never have ventured very far and would have limited our horizons… we cant avoid risk if we want to grow, but what we do need to do is minimize the cognitive impact of risk, and that is precisely what all the research suggests protective behaviors can do for us. References Savis, K. M. & Gidycz, C. A. (2000) Child Sexual Abuse Programs: A Metaanalysis. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 29 (2) p257-265 Finkelhor, D., Asdigian N, Dziuba-Leatrherman J. (1995) Victimization Prevention Programs for Children: A Follow-Up. American Journal of Public Health. December 1995, 85, 12 pp 1684-1689 Graham et al (2007) School-based prevention of depressive symptoms: a randomized controlled study of the effectiveness and specificity of the penn resiliency program. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 75 (1) p 919 Herman K. C., Borden, L. Reinke, W., Webster-Stratton, C. (2011) The impact of the incredible Years parent, child and teacher training programs on chilren’s co-occurring internalizing symptoms. School Psychology Quarterly 26(3) pp 189-201. Iwaniec, D. Larkin, E., Higgins, S., (2006) Research Review: Risk and resilience in cases of emotional abuse. Child and Family Social Work. Feb 2006, 11, 1, p73-82 Iwaniec D. (1997) The Emotionally Abused and Neglected Child. WileyBlackwell. Joffe, R. D., Dobson, K. S., Fine, S., Marriage, K. & Haley, G. (1990) Social problem-solving in depressed, conduct-disordered and normal adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Vol 18(5), Oct, 1990. pp.565-575. Koizumi, M. & Takagishi, H. (2014) The Relationship between Child Maltreatment and Emotion Recognition. PLoS One 9 (1) p1-4 Rutter, M. (1985) Resilience in the Face of Adversity: Protective Factors and Resistance to Psychiatric Disorder. British Journal of Psychiatry 147, 598-611
Masten A. S. & Coatsworth J. D. (1988) The development of Competence in Favourable and Unfavourable environments: lessons from research on successful children. American Psychologist. Feb 1988 53 (2) p205-220 Moss, E., Gosselin, C., Parent, S., Rousseau, D. & Dumont, M. (1997) Attachment and joint problem-solving experiences during the pre-school period. Social Development. 6 (1) p1-17
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