Building Resilience

Reducing the effects of adversity on young children’s healthy development is important. A child’s resiliency begins with secure attachments built in infancy. All young children need eye contact, affectionate touch, smiles and encouragement. At every age, having at least one loving and supportive relationship is the best predictor of a person’s resilience.

Research, Articles, and Documents

ACEs Infograph

The 5 Protective Factors
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Understanding ACEs
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The Truth About ACEs
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Nine Temperament Traits

‍Videos
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We Can Prevent ACEs
Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. As such, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are an important public health issue. Learn how everyone can help prevent ACEs by using strategies to create safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for all children.

How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime | Nadine Burke Harris
Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

InBrief: The Science of Resilience
One way to understand the development of resilience is to picture a balance scale or seesaw. Protective experiences and adaptive skills on one side counterbalance significant adversity on the other. Watch this video to visualize the science of resilience, and see how genes and experience interact to produce positive outcomes for children.

ZERO TO THREE
ZERO TO THREE works to ensure that babies and toddlers benefit from the early connections that are critical to their well-being and development.

Triple P NC
Triple P is the flexible, practical way to develop skills, strategies and confidence to handle any parenting situation. It's backed by decades of research. And it's already helped more than 4 million children and their parents.

Advocates for Health in Action
AHA improves the health and well-being of Wake County residents by facilitating and supporting community initiatives. We accomplish this by convening partners that change policies, systems and environments focused on well-being, healthy eating and physical activity.

Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University
The mission of the Center on the Developing Child is to drive science-based innovation that achieves breakthrough outcomes for children facing adversity. We believe that advances in science provide a powerful source of new ideas focused on the early years of life.

Prevent Child Abuse
Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina supports the development of safe, stable, nurturing relationships for children in their families and communities to prevent child abuse and neglect.

SAFEchild
SAFEchild is the only child abuse prevention agency in Wake County working directly with families. SAFEchild offers parent education and support services to families to prevent abuse and neglect, and changes the long-term effects of abuse if it has occurred.

Wake County Smart Start
WCSS works to improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of child care, provide preventive health and early intervention services and offer family support services—all delivered as part of a strong, diverse integrated early childhood system.
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