The concepts of resilience and protective factors are the positive counterparts to the constructs of vulnerability and risk factors. Resilient children are children who remain competent despite exposure to misfortune or to stressful events (Werner & Smith, 1992; Rutter, 1985).

Dispositions that act as protective factors include an active, problem-solving approach and a sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. Resilient children are characterized by a belief in their power to shape and have an impact on their experience.

Caring and support, high expectations, and opportunities for meaningful participation are protective factors for children found in families, schools, and communities (Benard, 1991). One of the key protective factors for children is the availability of consistent adults who provide them with a secure base for the development of trust, autonomy, and initiative (Werner & Smith, 1992).

The presence of a single risk factor typically does not threaten positive development. In situations where a child is vulnerable, the interaction of risk and protective factors determines the course of development. For example, growing up in a family that provides a sensitive, responsive home environment can offset the adverse effects of poverty.

If multiple risk factors accumulate and are not offset by compensating protective factors, healthy development is compromised (Schorr, 1989; Werner & Smith 1992). A child who is exposed to drugs in utero, and who is raised by abusive and/or neglectful parents in a dangerous neighborhood is at high risk for impaired social and cognitive competence.

Poverty increases the likelihood that risk factors in the environment will not be offset by protective factors. Poverty is often a constellation of risk factors that combine to produce "rotten outcomes" (Schorr, 1989). Garbarino (1990) describes high-risk neighborhoods as "an ecological conspiracy against children."

When a child faces negative factors at home, at school, and in the neighborhood, the negative effect of these factors is multiplied rather than simply added together, because these conditions interact with and reinforce each other (Werner & Smith, 1992; Schorr, 1989). For example, a child who experiences risk factors such as maltreatment at home, who lives in a dangerous neighborhood, and attends a poor-quality childcare setting and school, is unlikely to develop in a healthy manner.

The real ABC's come down to attention, strong relationships, and communication, all of which children must learn through interaction with adults (Greenspan, 1997).

In the 1970s, child development began to shift from the study of pathology to the study of self-righting tendencies in the human organism, which appear to move children toward normal development under all but the most adverse circumstances (Sameroff & Chandler, 1975). In The Child in Our Times, Dugan and Coles (1989) write of the first Black child to enter a segregated school in New Orleans. The little girl, who was six at the time, told the authors that she hoped that she would get through one day and then another. She also told him that if she did manage to do so, and to do so with success, she would have an explanation, "It will be because there is more to me than I ever realized." (p. 3). Studies of resilient children are an attempt to understand the "more."

The concepts of resilience and protective factors are the positive counterparts to the constructs of vulnerability and risk factors (Werner & Smith, 1992). Resilient children, called "keepers of the dream" by Germezy, Masten, and Tellegsan (1984), are children who remain competent despite exposure to misfortune or to stressful events (Rutter, 1985). One of the key elements identified in resiliency is a sense of self-efficacy, which allows the child to cope successfully with challenges. Rather than behaving as though they are at the mercy of fate, resilient children take an active stance toward an obstacle or difficulty (Rutter, 1985; Werner & Smith, 1992).

The capacity to bounce back requires the ability to see the difficulty as a problem that can be worked on, overcome, changed, endured, or resolved in some way. In addition, resiliency requires reasonable persistence, with an ability to know when "enough is enough" and a capacity to develop a range of strategies and skills to bring to deal with the problem, which can be used in a flexible way (Demos, 1989). Finally, in order for resiliency to flourish, one's efforts must be successful and gratifying in some way, at least some of the time (see Handout 1 (pdf format)).

Researchers have identified a number of protective factors that foster resiliency: caring and support (particularly the opportunity to form a supportive relationship with at least one adult), consistently communicating clear, positive expectations to the child, and opportunities for meaningful participation in the social environment (Benard, 1993). Children are not either at risk or not at risk, points out child-development expert James Garbarino. "It's more than the absence of risk, it's the presence of opportunities," he explains. "Put simply, while some children score '-1' (risk factor) and others score '0' (absence of risk), a third group scores '+1' (an opportunity factor" (1995, p. 153). The goal for educators and human service providers is not just to reduce risk; the goal is to help all children to be in the "+1" group.

The concept of resiliency has contributed a great deal to our understanding of how to provide supportive environments for children, and it has provided a much-needed shift from children's supposed deficits to recognizing and building on strengths. However, a simplistic interpretation of the resiliency literature may lead to the belief that that all life hazards offer opportunities for growth, and that some children are invulnerable to stress.

During the 1970s, Anthony (1974) introduced the analogy of the three dolls --one made of glass, one made of plastic, and the third made of steel - to contrast children in their vulnerability to adversity. Under the blow of the hammer, the first doll shatters and the second is permanently scarred, but the third doll only emits a fine metallic sound - appearing to be invulnerable. While Anthony and other resiliency researchers did not intend for policy makers to base practices on the notion that children should be invulnerable to an onslaught of life-threatening hazards, the concept of resilience became widely popular - particularly the idea of invulnerable children. People came to consider that there were some children so constitutionally tough that they could not give way under the pressure and stress of adversity (Rutter, 1985). Rutter (1985) characterizes the notion as "wrongheaded" in at least three respects:

• The resistance to stress is relative, not absolute
• The basis of the resistance is both environmental and constitutional
• The degree of resistance is not a fixed quantity; rather it varies over time and according to circumstances

In addition, researchers agree that risk increases substantially when children experience two risk factors and risk is multiplied (rather than merely added) as the number of risk factors increases (Rutter, 1985; Schorr & Schorr, 1988). Farber and Egeland (1989) caution that we should be responsible in discussing children's invulnerability lest policy makers come to harbor the belief that if children are strong enough, they can survive and overcome adversity of all kinds. Pianta and Walsh (1996) explain:

Young children are dependent on parents, family members, communities, and schools, that is, upon a system, for resources related to balancing the effects of life hazards. A comprehensive analysis suggests that viewing hazards as opportunities for growth and development is often a semantic twist to what is otherwise an experience that produces a negative trend in development that can be predicted with great regularity. No amount of semantic change or identification of individual success stories can mask the overwhelming evidence that for the population of children as a whole, life hazards are to be avoided, and it is the responsibility of the adult population to respond to this need (p. 121).

Life hazards are particularly likely to be encountered by children in poverty. Poverty has been called a constellation of risk factors because it increases the likelihood that numerous risk factors are present - in schools, families, and communities.

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