Raising a Resilient Child in a World of Adversity

Parenting doesn’t always come naturally. This book offers expert guidance for caregivers who struggle with parenting because of adversity in their own lives, or simply because they are raising kids in an increasingly stressful world.

As parents and caregivers we want to help our kids through everything, including difficult or disturbing experiences. But if we or our child have experienced adversity or trauma, this can be especially challenging. How do we know whether we are providing our child or teen with too much structure or not enough? How do we provide discipline that is effective but not overly harsh? How do we teach our kids to be resilient and manage their feelings when we have trouble managing our own?

Drawing on their extensive knowledge of ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and PACEs (protective childhood experiences), psychologists Morris and Hays-Grudo describe a balanced parenting approach to help parents manage these tricky balancing acts with confidence.

Each chapter describes a key stage in a child’s life, from babyhood through the teen years and highlights behaviors that are age-typical but often challenging for parents. Real-life examples and self-help activities and quizzes bring the material to life, and a rich resources section provides additional sources of help.

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

• Chapter 1. Balanced Parenting: The Secret to Raising Resilient Children
• Chapter 2. ACEs and PACEs: How Adverse and Protective Experiences Affect You and Your Child
• Chapter 3. Babies and Toddlers: Balancing Safety and Exploration
• Chapter 4. Early Childhood: Balancing Control and Choice
• Chapter 5. Middle Childhood: Balancing Limits and Independence
• Chapter 6. Tweens and Young Teens: Balancing Boundaries and Autonomy
• Chapter 7: Older Teens and Young Adults: Balancing Letting Go and Staying Involved
• Chapter 8. Becoming a Resilient Parent: It’s All About Balance!

References

Index

About the Authors

Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD, is a regents professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University, where she directs the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA), an NIH-funded center addressing the effects of early life experience on health and development. She cochairs the Oklahoma Legislative Task Force on Trauma-Informed Care.

She has published numerous scientific articles on the effects of adversity on children and families, on risk-taking in adolescents, and on the effects of nutrition and hormone therapy on quality of life and cognition in postmenopausal women. She is coauthor with Amanda Sheffield Morris of Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective.

Amanda Sheffield Morris, PhD, is a regents professor and the George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in the department of psychology at Oklahoma State University. She was a coinvestigator on the multi-site NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study and is a principal investigator on a similar study of infant development, the Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study.

Dr. Morris has authored numerous articles and chapters on child and adolescent development and the neuroscience of emotion regulation and parenting. She is coeditor of two books, Authoritative Parenting: Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development, and The Cambridge Handbook of Parenting: Interdisciplinary Research and Application. With Jennifer Hays-Grudo, she is coauthor of Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective.

This is a beautifully written, accessible book that describes an approach to parenting—“balanced parenting”—that will help parents do a better job raising their kids, even in the face of adversity. And, unlike many fads and fashions in parenting that come and go with the times, these authors’ recommendations are grounded in decades of solid, scientific research. I love this book!
—Laurence Steinberg, PhD, Distinguished University Professor of Psychology And Neuroscience At Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; Author of You And Your Adult Child: How to Grow Together in Challenging Times

An excellent addition to our understanding of the role that both adverse and protective childhood experiences play in the development of resilience. I highly recommend this balanced approach to parenting to anyone raising children, and especially those who either had adverse experiences in their own childhood or who are parenting children who had them.
—Michael H. Popkin, PhD, Counseling Psychology; Founder and President, Active Parenting Publishers; Author of The Active Parenting Programs

Amanda Sheffield Morris and Jennifer Hays-Grudo provide parents with a compelling and engrossing introduction to the scientific research on parenting. They explain how balanced parenting, which involves age appropriate levels of warm support and limit-setting, best promotes resilience and illustrate this approach concretely in relation to children of different ages, including those who have experienced adversity. Sheffield Morris and Hays-Grudo are both developmental psychologists as well as parents who use their varied experiences and expertise to maximal effect.
—Michael E. Lamb, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Fellow, Sidney Sussex College University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England; Editor of Psychology, Public Policy, & Law

• Watch Dr. Jennifer Hays-Grudo and Dr. Amanda Sheffield Morris, authors of Raising a Resilient Child in a World of Adversity, delve into Balanced Parenting in their new video seriesopens in new window.