Carly Udy | 13th August 2010
How resilient are you to life's hurdles?
A Tauranga academic says the answer will depend on the quality of relationships you've had throughout your life.
If your parents went through a nasty divorce, or they struggled financially, you may find yourself less resilient than those who did not experience that.
These are the findings of a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato's Tauranga campus Dr Peter Stanley.
Dr Stanley has just received his PhD, following research that indicates resilience in life is closely connected to the quality of relationships in a child's developing years.
Dr Stanley works in the Department of Human Development and Counselling, which is part of Waikato University's Faculty of Education.
His thesis looked at the role of "risk and protective" factors in the lives of young people over time, and how these factors help to develop resilience in a person.
"Resilience can be described as our capacity to endure difficulties, or our ability to bounce back from adversity," Dr Stanley said.
Dr Stanley said youngsters in New Zealand had a harder road than those in other OECD countries because our rate of social problems tends to be higher.
But there are strong forces for hope, he said.
In an earlier study in 1998, Dr Stanley assessed 12 Wellington students aged 11-12 who were identified by primary schools as being at risk of negative life outcomes.
The purpose of this study was to write a guide for teachers to identify young people who were at risk of substance abuse or other problems.
Ten years later, for his PhD study, he revisited the students, now 21-22, to discover to what extent risk and protection factors had influenced their lives and whether they considered that they were personally resilient.
"The results of the study were fascinating and show that the environment in which a child is raised is key to the sort of person they become in later life," Dr Stanley said.
One young man was placed in foster care at aged 12.
Dr Stanley said from a "really difficult early environment" the boy was welcomed into a large, extended family committed to his care, in a wholly protective environment.
"Today this young man is doing extremely well for himself in every sense and has a degree of maturity you typically wouldn't encounter in a young person."
Dr Stanley said positive interpersonal relationships have a huge influence on how an individual functions and how they are able to regulate their emotions. If they've had positive relationships earlier in life, these capacities can translate into goal seeking and other constructive actions.
"The central idea is that a person's resilience in life is determined by the nature and quality of their relationships within and across different developmental settings. This means that it is really helpful to development to have connections across family, school, friends, neighbourhood and community."
Dr Stanley says while social services are very important in our society, they can be transient and substitutory influences and do not replace a lifetime of loving relationships from family and friends.
From Bay of Plenty Times published on 13th August 2010
