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Raising Good Humans
Resilience: What It Really Means & The “Ordinary Magic” It Takes to Build It w/ Professor Ann Masten
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In today's episode I sit down with professor Ann Masten to unpack what resilience actually means—and why it’s so often misunderstood. We explore her powerful definition of resilience as the capacity of a system to adapt to serious challenges, not just a personality trait or inner toughness. From everyday stress to real adversity, we discuss the difference between harmful trauma and growth-building challenges, and why kids need support—not perfection—to thrive. We talk about the “ordinary magic” of caring relationships, schools, communities, and cultural traditions, and why resilience is built through connection across multiple systems. I WROTE MY FIRST BOOK! Order your copy of The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans Here: https://bit.ly/3rMLMsL Subscribe to my free newsletter for parenting tips delivered straight to your inbox: https://dralizapressman.substack.com/ Follow me on Instagram for more: @raisinggoodhumanspodcast Sponsors:...
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The following podcast is a Dear Media Production.
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Welcome to Raising Good humans podcast. I'm Dr. Liza Pressman and today we are talking about resilience. But the cool thing is that I got Professor Anne Mastin to come on the podcast. You, you might not know her because she's very deep in academia, but she is the most exquisite pioneering researcher on resilience. And she has truly advanced the theory on positive outcomes for children and families. And she has every award you can possibly imagine. She's written gazillions of peer reviewed articles, articles, and she recently did a second edition of her extraordinary book, Ordinary Magic, Resilience and Development. And I cannot tell you what a contribution she's made to this field. In her book Ordinary Magic, she kind of updates the research with key advances in theory and methods and research, and it is a landmark work. It was such a great honor to have Anne Mastin. I wish I could tell you how major she is in this field. I'm like, she's kind of the Meryl Streep of resilience. How about that? So have a listen and have a wonderful day. I would love for you to define resilience and how you came to this definition, because it's the definition that I use and I think it's the definition in this field, but it's not necessarily the definition that the wider world necessarily means when they say it, if that makes sense. I think there's like a big misunderstanding and I would just love for you to help us understand the definition of resilience.
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Well, you know, I've always understood resilience in terms of doing well in the context of adversity. But over time I began to realize we needed a definition that would be amenable to different disciplines, that people could understand from different walks of life. And so now I think of resilience as the capacity of a system. I'm fond of children as a living system and their resilience, but I wanted a definition that could apply to other systems as well. I wanted a definition that would work for a family or an economy or for the ecologists out there that are trying to make sure our planet and life on Earth endures. So I like definitions that are broad. And I define resilience as the capacity of a system to adapt successfully to challenges that have the potential to really harm or destroy that system. And of course, I focused a lot of my research on children and the systems they interact with. So a child is a living system, but connected to many other systems around them. They're the other People like their family and friends, a school system, a health system, and so forth. But I wanted a definition that could move across different levels of analysis because we have neuroscientists who are trying to understand the resilience of the body and the mind, the resilience of our cells, things like that. And during COVID we all learned and appreciated the importance of our immune system and its resilience. And we even went out and got vaccinated to boost it up. But I want to be able to communicate with humanitarians that are trying to improve the lives of children around the world. And many of the NGOs that help kids around the world have realized that kids depend on multiple systems around them. And it's important not only to make sure that kids have the right nutrition and the right kind of learning experiences, but also that they're supported by families, that the government provides them with resources, that they live in a safe environment, they need housing and shelter. It's really a multifaceted task to provide the conditions that foster healthy development and nurture the future resilience of children. I think it's important that we consider not just the immediate resilience of a person or a child, but also recognize, particularly as parents and adults in charge of educating kids and raising kids, that we have this job not only to protect children in the now, but also to invest in their future capacity. And parents naturally do this. I mean, they help their children learn and socialize them and so forth. And schools also do this. They try to help kids learn the skills and tools they will need to succeed in their society. But it takes many systems we talk about. It takes a village, I would say. I like to think it takes multiple systems, both inside a child and around a child, to both foster resilience for the future, but also to protect children in the now. And many of the threats that we now face in this world are really challenging. And they're multi system challenges. You know, we have a climate crisis unfolding. We saw what happened when we had a pandemic. I think that one threw us for a loop because we were surprised that an invisible virus can bring the world to a halt because it had cascading effects across system levels, ranging from your immune system and all the ways your body is affected by a virus to, you know, our supply chains collapsing, everybody having to stay home. And, you know, a lot of the burden fell on parents during COVID particularly parents with young children, because they were often trying to work from home and deal with so called distance learning, which was virtually Impossible for very young children. I mean, it didn't take long for my kindergarten granddaughter to figure out that dist Resistance learning was kind of a waste of time. And she just tuned out to, you know, trying to follow what was going on on her little iPad. That's from school. But, you know, that experience, I think, really underscored for everyone the importance of understanding resilience at multiple system levels and realizing that children it depend on many systems being working well and operating well, and some are inside the child, but they also depend on systems around them. Kids depend on their families. Families in turn depend on many systems, healthcare systems, safety systems and so forth. So there's so much interconnection in the ways in which we can adapt. And the more, you know, there are large threats like a natural disaster or a pandemic that really show us how interconnected we all are. And it's very difficult to respond and prepare for huge, large scale disasters for that reason, because so many systems are affected by it. But often we have a smaller crisis. It's in a family or it's in a neighborhood, or it's isolated in one area. And then other systems and people can come and provide aid to support rescue, Whether they're going out in their boats to help people off their roofs to get away from a flood, or they're volunteering to go help in another country that needs aid, whatever it is. I mean, we live in an interconnected world. And I think that it's important that our definitions of resilience recognize that. But that's not how we started. At the very beginning, the pioneers that I studied with wanted to understand how come there are some children who experience adversity or risk, who do well, whereas others flounder and really struggle and develop all kinds of problems. Problems. The pioneers realized we need to understand good development even in the midst of adversity, or how kids come out of very dangerous situations, whether it's child maltreatment or a war zone or some other kind of difficulty. How do they overcome that and grow up to be successful, content, contributing members of society? And, you know, the quest for understanding resilience in child development grew out of wanting to understand the origins of mental health problems and struggles and behavioral problems. But when people began to study kids who they believed to be at risk for problems, you know, because they were living in poverty or they had experienced maltreatment or whatever it was, they soon observed if they followed a group of kids that a lot of the children coming out of difficult circumstances were doing surprisingly well, surprising to them at the time because they were expecting to see the origins of problems. But what they began to see was that there are children who do well. And they went on a mission. Pioneers like my mentor, Norman Garmezy, Michael Rutter, Emmy Werner, they were captivated by these observations, individual cases as well as large scale studies of kids like, how do we explain this? And I think their great insight was realizing not just that there were good outcomes even when kids had difficult origins, but also they realized that was important for us to know. It's not enough to understand why kids have problems. We have to understand how kids avoid problems and how they overcome them and how they recover. What makes a difference? This was the big question for people when we started out, and it was really focused on individual children and can we figure out what the protective factors are in their life? And then can we figure out how that works? And could we then translate that into interventions for kids to try to foster and promote better outcomes among children who may be at risk?
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Well, I'm.
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But I, I'm not sure.
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I'm not fond of the word wiring because it sounds too.
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I knew that that was, you know.
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I know.
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But yeah, what's a better word? Because you're right, it sounds, I think
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it's important to ref. Remember is that we are a very adaptive species and that, you know, when, when you look at the list of prominent protective factors that come up all over the world, it's not surprising that they would emerge all over the place because they are adaptive. I mean that over generations These, the capacity to learn and adapt has been naturally selected. And also in cultures, through cultural evolution, you know, cultures figure out what matters to promote. What should we be promoting in kids? What are traditions that promote good development? So I think that the fundamental protective systems that underlie the factors we see as mattering for kids in adversity are the product of a long, long, many generations of evolution. But it's not just biological evolution. It's cultural evolution as well. We are social, we are culturally embedded. And from one generation to another, we learn and we shape and foster the learning and experiences that make for better adaptation. We've, we've learned to survive. And the survivors pass on a lot of their skills, both, and they pass on their biology as well. On the other hand, clearly there are threats that come out of the blue. There are threats that are overwhelming, and no child is invulnerable. In the very early days of resilience research, people sometimes talked about the invulnerable children. And of course, there's no such thing. And that's what the myth of Achilles was about. You know, there's no such thing as invulnerability. We're all vulnerable. But, you know, children are particularly vulnerable to the loss or separation from caregivers because they're, they're very dependent on care from other people. But I think that we have this capacity, but it still has to be nurtured, and we have to foster resilience. And not all children end up in a situation where that happens. There's situations. Some children in the world don't get the basic nutrition for brain development. And you've often talked about toxic stress in your books and in your podcast. Overwhelming stress can disrupt the biology as well as the social interactions of children, and they may go down a negative path. In fact, many of the powerful drivers of behavior, the most important adaptive systems, can actually be hijacked and put to a negative use. I mean, I think that there are gang leaders who know how to do this. It's kind of like your brain can be hijacked by drug addiction, too. Our reward systems are normally very powerful and positive. That's what, you know, you can watch delighted kids learning to walk or throwing things off the high chair. They're just thrilled to be having an effect on the world. But they're. And they feel rewarded and excited about accomplishment. Good teachers know and coaches know how to tap into that, right? So get people excited. But that, you know, there are drugs and also negative leaders who can tap into that as well. And so I like to keep that in mind. It's not always the case that the adaptive systems that evolved because they are protective and help you survive can. Are always put to the best use.
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Right.
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Well, things go awry, right?
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And I think that positive adaptation is the key because there can be adaptation that, yeah, goes awry. You. I can't help but think, I. I mean, I always think about this, but I happen to be, I think, lightly obsessed with this because my grandparents are Holocaust survivors and my grandfather's still alive. He's 101. And so he's still talking about it all the time because he's in a race against time in a way. He feels like he wants to make sure that we know every story. And I just recently asked him because I feel like I grew up with this idea that I come from, you know, this resilient lineage. And my kids and I have often talked about the bizarre, like, messaging, because nobody. That's not a flex to have survived something like that. It's just. And my grandfather, when I ask him, like, what do you think? It's not like he was more resilient. He just hit. There were like multiple magic moments in both of their lives during that terrible time that allowed them to survive this terrible circumstance. And then finding each other, their actual relationship, I think, is why they were able to have a family and grow into relatively happy, functioning people with, of course, this massive part of them that will never, you know, never healed. But I think it was just the fact that they had each other that allowed them to, like, I don't know that there were any internal systems in either of them. Who knows? But it felt so much to me.
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There could have been more variations in how robust people were to biological threats or starvation. I mean, there were all kinds of terrible threats. And people vary in their sensitivity to both, you know, to starvation or to whatever, certainly their variations in sensitivity to different kinds of experiences. But, you know, there was a lot of just pure luck involved.
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Right?
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Your luck, who was standing where, you know, exactly. Just really. But I've always thought it interesting, both in Viktor Frankl's account in a concentration camp, his famous account of how a sunset gave people hope. I mean, the idea that people in a concentration camp could be so moved to feel hope from a sunset, but this natural beauty, and he describes it reflected in the mud puddles of the concentration camp. And there are other accounts of, you know, war, children in war, where they suddenly realize one, there's a book called To Destroy youy Is no Loss, about a Cambodian girl, survivor of the killing fields. And she describes an epiphany where she is. She's in a terrible situation as a teenage, and a friend of hers has died after being attacked by people. And everybody started giving up hope, and they start carrying poison around in their pockets, so they kill themselves before they get tortured or whatever. But she has this epiphany where she's watching the sky again, nature and realizing, you know, the Khmer Rouge don't control what's happening in nature. And it just gives her hope for the future and, you know, just those moments of hope. But the hope is a very powerful and very human motivator. And sometimes it comes, you know, through these, you know, sudden, beautiful moments that kind of help step back from the current misery to realize not everything is horrible and gives a sense of hope. I mean, there are individual differences in physical robustness and stress regulation systems and how susceptible you are to different kinds of environmental exposures, but within the range of normal human capabilities and so forth, there certainly is a lot of potential capacity, but anybody can be overwhelmed as well.
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So if I move to the. Like, most of the. Hopefully, anybody who's taking the time to listen to this, I'm hoping is not. We're not talking about these extreme circumstances. I want to talk about kind of the everyday child and the everyday circumstances. And one of the things that I wanted to ask you about is, again, what you just mentioned is individual differences in temperament and sensitivity and resilience.
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I mean, there's so many individual differences in our children. And I think it's important for parents to. I mean, they know their kids the best and to kind of. They learn. They learn from experience, what bugs their children, what sets them off, what they're reactive to. And of course, developmentally that will vary as well. Kids may be very sensitive at some point in time to, like, rejection from a friend or something, but they may change as they get older and have a different take on life. So, I mean, I think it's important for parents to realize that kids do vary in sensitivity and what they're reactive to. And I think most parents learn this by experience. And they. Especially when they have more than one child and realize their kids are really sensitive to different things. Or are there just some kids who kind of just easily blow everything off? They're just kind of, you know, not bothered by very much. They're more easygoing and using the temperament language. Sometimes those sensitive kids, you know, they're intense in a way, and they can, you know, apply that intensity in positive ways. Too, they can get, you know, they may be driven to really understand something deeply. If they have the right opportunities, they can really blossom. So, you know, I think it's important to appreciate the individual sensitivities and differences in kids and also realize that those are always changing, too, as kids develop.
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So is it. I guess it's like there's the. There's both a burden and a relief in our role as parents. And I guess I'm trying to figure out, like, I think of it as a relief that our presence is powerful, but I could also see parents blaming themselves if that wasn't enough.
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Yeah, but I think one of the themes that really comes through in your parenting book is, you know, good enough is good enough. I mean, there. There is, you know, development is on your side, on the side of parenting, and adaptation is on your side. You know, there's a general. I think, you know, a lot of the adaptive systems that come naturally to kids are they bend toward the positive. And, you know, so development is on your side. And, you know, as kids, it's always been very striking. There's, you know, as kids make the transition to adulthood, even kids that get off track in adolescence, a number of them will turn in a more positive direction as they move into adulthood. And, you know, I think that, you know, certainly parents have influence, but, you know, I think all parents realize as their kids go to school and then they form friendships and then they move into adolescence, where friends have even more influence. There's a lot going on in the life of a child. And so parents only have limited, limited influence, which is a good thing. And that, you know, there's more to raising children than one parent. But in emergencies, parents play a huge role. I mean, I've done a lot of research locally with families experiencing homelessness and, you know, in a situation, an unhoused situation, or in a shelter for homeless families, the role of a parent really changes because the family may be cut off from other support systems. And then it's really important for the parents to play a role of reconnecting their kids to support systems, making sure they get to school and so forth. And I think when parents are in that kind of situation, it's really important that we have recognized that they need support. You know, parents are important, but they need support. They can't do it on their own.
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And now for a quick break. This episode is brought to you in part by Better Help. Now, of course, we want to take a moment. March includes International Women's Day, a moment to celebrate women's strength and progress and also recognizing how much we carry every day. We care for others, we manage unseen responsibilities, we manage other people's emotional well being. Ours can get very overlooked. So BetterHelp wants to remind women how much they matter and offer therapy in a space to take care of themselves because we do deserve to put our oxygen mask on first. So I'm inviting listeners to use BetterHelp if you've been considering therapy but just feel like there's no way you can put yourself first. You don't have time. I think one of the best parts about BetterHelp is that it is convenient that you have access to over 30,000 therapists and it's online so the platform can be done from wherever is convenient for you. And you can get a licensed therapist at the time that works for you in the space that works for you. Your emotional wellbeing matters. So find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com humans that's betterhelp h e l p.com humans okay, if you have just too many subscriptions to things and you just haven't taken the time to unsubscribe, or maybe you forgot that you had the subscriptions, Experian is an app for you. If you Experian can take the pain out of canceling subscriptions by handling the entire thing for you. You just keep the ones you want and you put money back in your pocket by getting rid of the ones you don't. Over 200 subscriptions are cancelable or at least negotiable, like if you signed up accidentally or you decided it wasn't working for you. You can save money by letting Experian negotiate your best rate. They keep an eye out for new deals and savings opportunities that will negotiate directly with your provider on your behalf even if you want to keep a subscription. But you see that there's a better deal to have. They can help you with that and you get to keep 100% of your savings. So get started with the Experian app. Now I have been there. I have done this. I'm just signed up for too many things. It's too easy to get on an app or sign up, like subscribe to something and then you think like I didn't want to do that. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions are eligible. Savings is not guaranteed. This is for paid membership with connected payment accounts required. See experian.com for details. E x p e R-I-A n.com and get started with Experian app now. So that makes me also want to ask about what are. What are some of the things that you think of? I love the title of your book. It's like the greatest title of all time. Can you sort of talk specifically about ordinary magic?
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Sure, yeah. The idea of ordinary magic really is a recognition that some of the most powerful protective factors and processes that make it possible for a child or a parent or a family to overcome adversity are perfectly ordinary resources and relationships and opportunities. It doesn't require anything rare or exceptional to make it through. By and large, most of the people who overcome adversity and do well are simply relying on very basic, fundamental human capacities to think ahead, to control their emotions, to connect with other people, to utilize support. And a lot of the magic is coming from the combination of supports around a child. I mean, we have internal systems that regulate our stress and our body temperature and fight off even when we're not paying attention. Our immune system is hard at work trying to take care of internal threats to our biology. But there's a lot of other resources in the world around us that make a difference for kids. So I think by that concept, I wanted to underscore that there are both. You know, the. The capacity for adapting comes from. Is well within the realm of human capabilities. It doesn't require anything special. And at the top of the list of, you know, for kids, of what contributes to the ordinary magic is relationships with caring adults and the, you know, families and the, you know, having strong relationships with other people gives kids a sense of protection as well as belonging. And those are very powerful systems and feelings. But within, you know, when you have a child who is learning and connected to the world around them and has good caregiving and the opportunity to learn through teachers and schools and the people around them, they will develop good problem solving skills. They will develop confidence in their own capabilities. They'll develop a positive sense of self. And these all work together. We know that. And you write about this sometimes in your work, Elisa, that, you know, when people, when families create positive routines and follow cultural traditions that are supportive to kids and have rules and structure and fun in the family, that kids flourish in that environment, they develop a lot of the protective resources you need to navigate challenges in life. They develop a sense of how to solve problems, optimism that solved problems can be solved. They learn that other people can help you. They have a sense of belonging. They connect and realize, you know, there's other resources out there. Besides my immediate family, there are teachers that are invested. There are spiritual leaders, there are pastors, and there are mentors. There are lots of people out there who can offer support and really are happy to do so. So there are social connections, and they're also internal qualities that all work together to, in combination, make it possible for kids to weather the storm, as we might say, and gain experience. You know, obviously over the course of development, this changes because very young children depends so much on caregiving on the people around them. But as kids get older, they begin to depend on more of their own capabilities and more on other people outside of the family, their friends, their romantic partners, their teachers, and so forth. And as children develop, they gradually, through many interactions with other people and experiences, develop a sense of purpose. They may adopt cultural belief systems that give them a sense of optimism and faith and ground them in spiritual beliefs and meaning. They participate in cultural traditions both inside the family and outside the family that give anchor kids. And all of these play a role in the situations of threat or challenge. And ordinary magic refers to the, you know, broadly to the capacity that can be generated when you have a number of these operating together in a positive way.
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So when you were raising your kids, to take it from research to real life, when you were raising your kids, did you think, like, were you thinking, here's what I'm going to focus on. Were you consciously thinking, like, oh, I want to make sure that we think hopefully, or optimistically in the context of problem solving, or were you thinking about just connecting? Or were you thinking about, oh, gosh, we're supposed to. Adaptation is pretty likely. I'm just going to enjoy my kids, live my life. Like, what was your headspace as a resilience researcher?
- [39:30]
A
That's a really good question. You know, I think I kind of kept a little bit of separation with my work. I think being someone who studied child development in general, resilience in particular, I mean, that made me appreciate the lives of people around me, But I never tried to apply that directly in my family. And I think my own child rearing probably had more of an impact.
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Your experience?
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My experiences being raised as a child, I really. I had a very capable mother. I grew up in a military family where we were always moving around. And, you know, I think my parents were good role models of trying, you know, how to, you know, deal with the challenges of moving around and also the challenges of deployment. You know, my father was deployed when I was a teenager to the Vietnam War. And, you know, so as kids, we were aware. I also grew up moving all the time and like other military kids, when we're older, we would talk about the challenges of having to adapt to a new school and share our little secrets. So how can you try to fit in? And it was way easier to fit in in a military school where there were other kids who were always moving around. If you were stationed at a place where you went to a school where everybody knew each other since kindergarten, that was a whole different kind of challenge. But I think those kinds of life experiences and I had wonderful relationships with an extended family because we were always moving. We were kind of anchored by our relatives who stayed put. My grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles were a big supporters for us who were traveling around. I think I was more reliant on my brothers and sisters as well, because we would. We were traveling around as a little group, you know, and we might get separated from friends. And there was no social media. Then we had to actually write letters if we wanted to stay in touch with people, keep in touch through letters. Nobody could afford long distance phone calls, so took a long time to get a letter from Germany to the US Somewhere, things like that. But no. So I didn't really. I think being a researcher in child development enhanced my appreciation and noticing the development and thinking, maybe thinking more about what can I do here in situations. But I was a little reluctant to be too much of a researcher in my family life. And I know my husband and kids, as they got older, would have really not put up with it anyway.
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So, yeah, I can tell you that is for sure not fun, right. For. For kids to think that they might be like, you're playing around with, how's this working in the household? But did you feel. Did you. Did it give you a sense of like. Because for, for the people on here who aren't aware necessarily, but you're like a massive powerhouse of a researcher, like on the planet Earth. So in this field, I would say you've pretty much, you know, you're. You could. You. You'd probably acknowledge you're one of the big ones, right?
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So I think I'm one of. Maybe I'm one of the oldest who spend a lot of years trying to understand resilience. That. That certainly is true.
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Okay.
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But.
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But you couldn't do that without working really hard. Like, there's. You couldn't just like casually do this. And so I'm curious because I think it would feel really good for people to know that you were doing that and it. And. And able to raise a family. You weren't like, oh, I Shouldn't I should only just, like, focus on my family and not working? I'm just sort of.
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Certainly it wasn't. It was challenging as it is for all parents who are working, and there wasn't a. You know, I think at the time I come, you know, I was in the era where there weren't as many female faculty working.
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B
Oh, right. I didn't even factor that in.
- [44:14]
A
Yeah. But I. I think, you know, I had a lot of support. I have a wonderful husband I've now been married to for 54 years. You know, I married in college and by the time we had kids and we were both working, but, you know, we. We worked out, you know, a kind of a combination system. But I was exhausted a lot of the time when the kids were young and, you know, we just prioritized the kids. And I would always, you know, kind of be astonished when people would ask questions about what my hobbies were. I was like, you know, neither of us have any time for hobbies. You know, we're trying to do our jobs and raise kids, and that's all we can do right now. But, no, it's exhausting. And part of the reason it's exhausting is because, you know, our society doesn't always provide a lot of support for working parents. I think it's important that there's other people in the lives of kids, too. And you can tag team. I had a husband, I could tag team. When I would be at wit's end, we could tag team, say, I think I need to go on a walk. And you take over here when, you know, kids know exactly how to push your buttons when you're exhausted, for example. But yeah, I don't. I didn't have any special anything being a parent. I just tried. You know, I think I learned most from the parenting I received, and I. I think studying child development made me a great appreciator of, you know, watching the development of children because it is amazing to watch children develop. And, you know, I just appreciated that what, you know, I could. Was more aware of the. As their development unfolded and seeing it and humble enough to realize it wasn't up to me to, you know, do everything that they were getting. They were learning from many other people. And I tried. I did try. We did try to make sure they were in good schools and had good caregivers at child care and that sort of thing, which was. Which is really important.
- [46:34]
B
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- [50:07]
A
Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm. Now, as a grandparent, I think what I think about the most as a grandparent is how. Well, first of all, how much fun it is to be a grandparent, because you don't. You see, you know, you only can. You can focus on the fun part. But the other thing I realized is, you know, the importance of supporting the parents. You know, how to support parents. Parents don't have enough support in my view. We don't both from a society point of view and in general. It's just, you know, too many parents are too isolated and our society doesn't provide much support. I mean, compared to other advanced economies, our society doesn't provide much in the way of support for parents. So I try to be supportive to my, the parents of my grandchildren as well as having fun and paying attention to the grandchildren. You know, I feel lucky to be in that position. And I can do, you know, in a way I can do more for the local. I have local grandchildren and a grandchild far away who I try to see when I can. But, you know, I think it's important to really support parents. And, you know, that's why I think, you know, podcasts like this are great because I think they're supportive for parents.
- [51:32]
B
Well, I certainly hope so. And you're, you've contributed so much to supporting parents. So I just want everybody to benefit from, from your words and your work and your research. Even though this is very in the weeds of, like, you know, just people who I think are kind of just trying to get through the day, I just like to ask, and especially with you, because I think it's cool that you have also witnessed Grant being a grandparent and, and going through all of this and sort of seeing the, the trends, the parenting trends shift over time.
- [52:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. The challenges are always changing. And, you know, we've talked about this a bit, but social media is Challenging right now for parents. It opens a whole new world of, oh, what am I supposed to be doing as a parent here?
- [52:27]
B
Okay, one last question. I'm just again thinking of like the everyday interactions and the everyday parent and the. You mentioned. And I, I do mention this, but toxic stress. But I, I'm, I'm a little bit like, I wish it had another. I wish there was like another way to talk about it because then I think people confuse a lot of things that are just not remotely problematic stressors to being really bad for kids. And I wonder if, if you could address sort of like how you would help. Like, do you have a way of thinking about how to help parents distinguish between something that is actually bad for their kids and something that is totally in the context of a good relationship in that resilience building?
- [53:20]
A
It's a learning experience. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I tend to think of things more in terms of challenges. I mean, there, there are situations that are completely traumatic, dangerous, life threatening for kids and damaging. And we tried as, you know, as parents and as people in the community, we want to try to prevent that. It's an important strategy in the world of. How do you promote resilience broadly? Well, one of the basic strategies is to lower risk exposure. I mean, there's a lot of trauma and risk out there that kids don't need to be exposed to and it's not helpful. It's harmful to development. But there are other kinds of challenges that, you know, are ordinary challenges, I mean, that we're going to encounter. I mean, life is full of challenges and we want our kids to be able to, you know, navigate challenges, get help when they need it, find their way through. And you know, I think that parents have always this task of figuring out, where's my child here? How much can they handle? How much support should I provide? In developmental psychology, we talk about it as scaffolding. I mean, if it's too much for a child, what can I do to help and help them solve the problem so they learn how to manage and deal with something? And how much. What do I do when it's clearly too much and I have to intervene and support them? And I think we're always, as parents, we negotiate this every day in little ways and big ways. But, you know, stress is, is positive in many ways, but not stress that's completely overwhelming to a child or to an adult. I mean, each of us has experienced things as adults too that are very overwhelming. But you know, to under. We have to, you know, very, you know, Young infants, you know, they have some tools they can shut out, block out things, they can cry and so forth. But we have to do most of the intervention if very young children are threatened. But as kids get older and they go out and about in the world, they need to be able to figure out how to solve problems, what to do in difficult situations, how to get back up if they fall down. And, you know, we learn through many interactions of little adversities, we gain confidence about how to work through and navigate bigger challenges. And kids also need to know their limits. You know, when do I need help? And you want a relationship with your child where they can come to you if they realize that things are out of hand, like with a peer or at school or whatever. So, you know, I think there certainly are things we need to prevent that children should never experience. War would be a good one on that list. War is just not good for kids. And I remember when I first started studying homelessness in families, there was an article. One of the articles I thought was very powerful, had the title homelessness is not good for children and other Living Things. And I thought, that's absolutely true. So that's one we need to prevent. There are traumatic maltreatment, separating parents and kids. I mean, there's all kinds of things we need to intervene that are just too overwhelming, and war situations are really, really terrible for children. But there are other situations where kids need challenges to hone their skills. And I think it's very analogous to our immune system. If your immune system is never challenged, you don't function as well. And just as a personal example, I have a lot of food allergies. And I can't help but think it's related to the fact that was one of those babies and kids in the 1950s where they sterilized everything. Yeah, you know, I. I wasn't. You know, and the later kids in the families are like, oh, just pick it up and let them. Let them play in the dirt. Doesn't matter if the bottle falls on the floor, whatever.
- [58:02]
B
Right.
- [58:02]
A
But I was, like, the oldest, where everything was sterilized and whatever. And I think, you know, it's probably not a coincidence that I'm the one who has various allergy problems. But we know that your immune system needs to adapt to the environment, and it does that by experience. And we know that, you know, if you're exposed to some things, your immune system makes antibodies and it improves. And we boost our immune system with vaccines as well as exposure. And our immune system tunes itself to the environment it's exposed to. And I think that kids similarly need experience with challenges in their life. And it just. I think it's part of what parents do is kind of keep an eye out, that the challenges are manageable and they provide supports. I think teachers and coaches do this as well. It's part of the learning process and the way in which resilience, in a way, can be passed on in generations. You know, you. You help people learn the tools that they need to manage adversity.
- [59:19]
B
I mean, I could listen to you for days. I really like the idea. I just like the way you said that, that. That we kind of tune to the immunes. I wrote it down because I liked the idea that the immune system tunes itself in the way that I just. I do like that analogy. I mean, I've always thought about vaccines and that analogy, but I haven't really thought about, like, the sort of reciprocal response that it's kind of like a. Like, I don't know what the word is, but it feels like it's different that. That we're kind of also going to tune to the Experience, and the Experience is going to tune to us. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.