Building Resilience in Children and Adolescents with Learning/Social/Emotional Challenges

Building Resilience in Children and Adolescents with Learning/Social/Emotional Challenges
By: Adam DeAngelo, M. Ed. consultspecialed@aol.com

Many parents ask me, “What is the most important skill to teach children who learn differently?” Some of these same well meaning adults focus on building reading skills, practicing math facts, setting up structure at home and reading aloud to their children every night. While these interventions reinforce important skills, I would argue that building a sense of resiliency is perhaps the single most crucial skill we can put into their proverbial toolbox of strategies.

My mentor and educational hero, Dr. Robert Brooks, has written many best sellers on this topic. He and his colleagues have conducted longitudinal research studies over the past few decades highlighting the importance of resilience. Improvement in reading and being able to pass a five-minute math fact quiz are important and no doubt wonderful achievements for kids, but how to handle setbacks and bounce back is really what life is about.

The building block for developing resilience at school is the creation of a strength-based Individualized Education Plan, or IEP. Jerry Seinfeld owned one of the most popular shows on television for ten years with his comedy Seinfeld, which he labeled a show about “nothing” due to the common life themes that ran through each episode. A colleague and I often refer to many IEPs that are written these days as “Seinfeld” IEPs due to their generic nature and their value towards developing resilience—which is “nothing” in most cases. Charles Schwab, financial powerhouse and developer of http://www.schwablearning.org/, once stated that someone on Wall Street with no experience should be able to pick up any IEP and understand it based on its individuality and ease of implementation. If you removed the name on your child’s IEP would their teachers be able to tell it belonged to your child? They should be able to.

Dr. Robert Brooks talks about two important themes in developing resilience at school: incorporating “Islands of Competence” and considering the “Attribution Theory” when developing IEPs. I love the term “Islands of Competence” as a synonym for strengths because, as Dr. Brooks mentions in his book Raising Resilient Children, many of our children possess strengths that are not academically based and rely on us to build bridges between their islands (strengths) and the mainland (school). It is time to begin to work strengths such as Legos, Pokemon, video games, rock climbing, gardening, rock collecting, athletics, drama, dancing, and horseback riding into the development of IEPs. As my 5 year old son Dylan reminded me last week, “Dad, everyone is good at something!” It is up to us to find out what that something is and weave it into the IEP and the curriculum.

I work with many exceptional, child-centered educators whose main focus is to always do what’s best for kids. Unfortunately they often fail to consider what Dr. Brooks defines as the Attribution Theory, which simply states that kids experience authentic success and build resilience if they can attribute their accomplishments to outcomes within their personal control. The Specially Designed Instruction section of IEPs are usually filled with wonderful accommodations that promote success. Many of these accommodations rely on adults for their implementation, however, so students do not attribute their success in using these strategies to being within their personal control. Preferential seating and assistance with biology note taking no doubt level the academic playing field for the exceptional child, but it is the introduction, the maintenance, and the delivery of these strategies that matter most. If you asked your child who is most responsible for their success at school, would they name themselves or someone else?

A special education teacher for the last 10 years, I still struggle with ensuring that all my students are working toward authentic success. In addition, I’ve spent many sleepless nights swimming out to those “Islands of Competence” in hopes of understanding my students’ strengths and, more importantly, figuring out how to weave these strengths through the IEP and the curriculum.

The word resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back readily from a setback or failure. To take this definition one step further I would hypothesize that your ability to bounce back from failure, or your personal “elasticity” to adjust after a setback, can be directly related to your ratio of positive to negative experiences. Kids who feel valued and connected in their schools due to the acceptance of their strengths and the praise of their individual accomplishments often are empowered to tackle challenges with a strength-based approach.

Obviously these skills and outcomes do not develop overnight or even over one school year, but the blueprint starts with the right mindset of those adults—parents, teachers, principals, and coaches—who are responsible for guiding an exceptional child through school. I watched an interview of Philadelphia Phillies catcher Chris Coste on TV during the late stages of the 2007 Major League Baseball season, which was a successful rookie campaign for the 33 year old catcher. The interviewer asked him if he ever thought during all of his setbacks that he would make it to the big leagues at 33 years old. Coste’s response was, “I had enough success along the way to keep me going in pursuit of my ultimate goal. Without those feelings of accomplishments along the way and people believing in my ability I would have hung it up long ago.”

A childhood hockey coach once told me that it takes three positive experiences in a row to enable someone to look at one negative experience with objectivity and resolve. Building resilience in exceptional children starts with a strength-based mindset of one charismatic adult and becomes infectious. It starts with one IEP, one successful experience, and soon envelopes all of those involved. It all starts with the courage of one to step forward and think outside the box.