While most parents want their children to be sensitive, kind, caring individuals, there's some troubling research on primary school children that has been done by Thomas Boyce and his colleagues at the University of British Colombia (not far from the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics). Testing for stress reactivity using biological markers like cortisol levels during testing, Boyce and his colleagues have shown that a biologically predisposed sensitive child, one who is likely to feel emotional slights or be prone toanxiety, actually does better than most children when there is little stress in her environment. Give her a good home, an easy school routine, and she'll outperform her less anxiety-prone peers. That may be because such children are also likely to be creative, expressive individuals, and those characteristics endear them to their parents and teachers. If you have a sensitive child, the good news is that as long as her world is safe and predictable, she is likely to do just fine.
However, the child who is not reactive, not anxious, who can seem a little aloof, or even aggressive, may be the child who survives better under stress, outperforming the more sensitive child. But the advantage is seen only in stressful environments where the child is being threatened. When families are in conflict, or neighbourhoods in chaos, the child who is less likely to be biologically predisposed towards feeling excessive emotion is also the one more likely to breeze through her day. That aloof aggressive personality offers some well-needed protection when times get tough.
In a low stress environment, the opposite can be true for these emotionally disengaged children. Those muted emotions are not going to help him adapt as well to the calm order of a routine classroom or the safety provided by a loving home. He's just not going to be as emotionally open, maybe not even as connected or creative. But add a healthy dose of stress, and that child's emotional neutrality serves him well. While his anxiety ridden peer is crying in the closet under the stairs, the more robust, but emotionally distant child is able to carry on.
I see in my own work on resilience across many cultures similar patterns to this. A strength (like being emotionally less reactive) in high risk situations where a child is under pressure doesn't necessarily benefit the same child in less risky environments. Think of a high school diploma and you can see what I mean. The studious child from a healthy middle class home who finishes high school is certainly doing something to help his future, but as we know from stories of people like Bill Gates, we don't all need to go to university to become billionaires. Imagine, though, you are a child in a remote Native community where high school completion rates are just 10%. Finishing high school in that very stressful environment will offer you a monumental advantage in life, accounting far more for your future success than the advantage a high school diploma gives an urban middle-class child who already has lots of other personal, family, and community resources to exploit.
When thinking about a child's resilience, we need to think about the context in which the child is coping. The personality traits that will be most helpful in one environment may be detrimental, or less helpful, in another. For parents, and policy makers, this means we need to understand that what children need in a highly volatile environment (like during a angry divorce) is not the same thing the child needs to survive when conditions are calm.
