When I hear the word "resilience" in the context of helping children or students to manage their toxic stress, I object, respectfully, to the individual making the statement. In this article in the Atlantic Monthly -- "How Kids Learn Resilience" -- I came across an interesting admission.
“For all our talk about noncognitive skills, nobody has yet found a reliable way to teach kids to be grittier or more resilient. And it has become clear, at the same time, that the educators who are best able to engender noncognitive abilities in their students often do so without really “teaching” these capacities the way one might teach math or reading—indeed, they often do so without ever saying a word about them in the classroom. This paradox has raised a pressing question for a new generation of researchers: Is the teaching paradigm the right one to use when it comes to helping young people develop noncognitive capacities?”
I have proposed that the answer to the paradox being discussed is actually the act of spending time and paying attention to the student, a temporary expedient because teachers are not usually in the life of a student for very long. For many who have read my writing, they hear me talk about behaviors in terms of “positive,” “neutral” and “negative.” We all focus on the negative behaviors. Yet the brain releases soothing and calming chemicals when we experience both neutral and positive behaviors that are rewarded. For example, gambling gives the brain excitement when there is the potential for winning a prize. When I watched my mother pay pull tabs or bingo, she was excited by the prospect of winning. Winning, of course, causes the brain to release positive chemicals. But even the prospect of winning causes the release of positive chemicals.
Positive behaviors that are recognized by important people in the life of a student produce the same results. When a student does well, and is praised or recognized for their achievement, their brain produces feel good chemicals, and because the reward is to feel good, I believe the brain (unconsciously or subconsciously) seeks more of what makes it feel good. If that is positive or neutral behaviors, they are added to the list of what the brain seeks. The more stress we have, the greater our need for “feel good” behaviors, whether they are positive, neutral or negative.
Teachers who make their students feel special, even in the face of negative behaviors, are helping. But in my view, they are not really healing the student or teaching them resilience. The act of healing is different than the act of coping. As Dr. Vincent Felitti wrote:
“Because no one shoots heroin to get endocarditis or AIDS, might heroin then be used for relief of profound anguish dating back to childhood experiences? Might it be the best coping device a person can find? If so, is this phenomenon a public health problem or a personal solution? How often are public health problems personal solutions? Is drug abuse self-destructive, or is it a desperate attempt at self-healing, albeit at a significant future risk?” [LINK HERE].
So I ask this question: Because the brain is capable of producing positive chemicals, isn’t it reasonable to believe that the brain can seek self-healing from positive people who pay attention to the traumatized student? But because the self-healing chemicals dissipate over a short period of time in the brain, do we need to teach our students how to recognize the signs of stress, and the self healing tools that help them generate their own solutions internally? That, I believe is healing.
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