Resiliency

“Resiliency is what happens when one regains functioning after adversity.”

--Norman Garmezy, 1993

Families throughout this country have always shown remarkable resiliency, or flexible adjustment to natural, economic, and social challenges. Evidence of resilient families is demonstrated across diverse family groups in America.

Key Points

“Family resiliency is the family’s ability to cultivate strengths to positively meet the challenges of life.” Strong families help children learn resilient behavior when they teach problem-solving skills and provide positive, non-critical support and sense of togetherness. The values and skills learned at home give individuals the power to shape their lives.

Families that learn how to cope with challenges and meet individual needs are more resilient to stress and crisis. Strong families solve problems with cooperation, creative brainstorming, and openness to others.

A family’s ability to recover from crisis is influenced by life stressors and by family perceptions. A family’s goals, values, problem solving skills, and support networks impact its adaptation to long-term stress and crisis.

Family resiliency includes “...characteristics, dimensions, and properties which help families to be resistant to disruption in the face of change and adaptive in the fact of crisis situations.”

Children and adults who learn the values and skills of resiliency will cope with stress, manage relationships, and contribute to others’ lives more consistently than those without such strengths.