Resilience In Children

Promoting Wellness and Resilience in Children and Young Adults

Resilience is defined as the ability to conform to adversity, stress, tragedy or trauma. In essence, it is one’s ability to remain strong, stable and still be able to maintain healthy levels of physical functioning and be psychologically sound even in the face of chaos or disruption. On the other hand, wellness is defined as the overall balance of one’s physical, spiritual, social, intellectual, occupational and environmental wellbeing. Wellness involves a number of life skills that seek to promote wellbeing and also help prevent the outbreak of disease. This paper takes a look at ways in which we can promote and build wellness and resilience in children and young adults from the African-American community.

As a counselor, understanding the culture of the group (in this case African American) is an important step towards encouraging wellbeing and resilience. It is impossible for parents to especially in the African-American community to protect their children from the challenges and ups and downs that come with life. However, despite the everyday challenges faced by this minority group, raising resilient children and young adults is possible and can furnish them with the tools much needed to respond to the challenges that come with adolescence and navigate them successfully to adulthood.

Despite best efforts, preventing daily stress and adversity in young adults is not possible but resilience can be learnt from changing the way they think about the adversities and challenges. In the current setup of African-American family set up, children and young adults go through tremendous stress and challenges which have a potential of damaging both their psychological and physical wellbeing. In today’s environment, young adults as well as children need to acquire skills, develop strengths to cope, bounce back from hardships and be prepared for

Projects that support safe environments ensuring that no bullying or teasing is tolerated should be established. Creating healthy nutrition and eating habits so as prevent obesity and other weight complicated illnesses should be encouraged. Making the neighborhood a conducive environment where all children and youth are valued and accepted for who they are, brainstorming on ways to help create an environment which promotes mental wellness and educating everyone in the community about the signs of mental health and what action to take if such a problem is recognized in one of the people in the target group are crucial prevention activities that encourage wellness. Organizing mental wellness fairs in which parents, youth and health professionals collectively participate in making mental wellness a reality is recommended.

Involving the community in promoting wellness and resilience is important. There are various community resources that are available to help promote mental health and wellness. If used appropriately, these resources will help the community in the African-American setup to identify the children and youth who are struggling with mental problems and help them cope and later overcome problems associated with mental