Resilience and Stress

The first part of this weeks reading that I found interesting was the part on resilience and stress. Children face stress all of the time, and how they deal with that stress can effect them for a life time. Not only does it come down to how much stress the child faces but also how resilient the child is to stress. Berger says that resilience is, "a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity" (Berger, 2011, p. 353). According to Berger children handle stress in all kinds of different ways, but Berger states that children handle stress based on how they perceive it. If children are repeatedly exposed to stress their resilience decreases dramatically, but children handle stress based on how those around them handle stress as well. If, as Berger states, children see their mother being abused by their father, and their mother leaves the abuser and moves on with her life and is not depressed Berger states that children can have a positive view of the situation. But Berger also states that when children are repeatedly exposed to stress their resilience becomes less and less as seen with children of hurricane Katrina. The children were uprooted from their homes, and repeatedly were exposed to stress along the the journey. The way children cope with stress is somewhat of a mystery because some children go through so much difficulty in their lives but turn out seemingly unharmed. So why do some children handle stress with apparent ease and others cannot?

Reference:
Berger, K. S. (2011). The Developing Person Through the Life Span. New York: Worth Publishers.