Raising Resilient Children

The good news is that resiliency can be learned, according to Karen Reivich, Ph.D., co-director of the Penn Resilience Project at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of The Resilience Factor (Broadway Books). "Resilience can be broken down into a set of specific abilities, and those abilities can be learned and applied over time," Reivich says. By altering the way we think about adversity, we can actually teach ourselves, and our children, to be more resilient.

With the right guidance, Sandy could learn to deal with the obstacles in her life in a far more constructive way. Just as physical training strengthens the body over time, there are no "quick fixes" in this important but challenging task. Learning resiliency skills can take weeks or even months. Internalizing them, for the skills to be used naturally without the need to consciously focus on them, will take even longer.