Summary
Highlights
Child development can be conceptualized as a scale with two sides. One side accumulates negative factors such as stress, violence, and neglect, while the other side is loaded with positive factors like supportive relationships, skill-building opportunities, and community resources. These factors, similar to weights on a teeter-totter, influence a child's developmental outcomes.
The way the scale tips is also affected by the position of its fulcrum, which represents a child's genetic makeup. The fulcrum's position determines how the scale responds to stacked factors and how easily it tips. While children start with different genetic predispositions, the fulcrum isn't fixed; it's a sliding setpoint that can shift over time.
There are critical periods in human development, such as early childhood and adolescence, when the fulcrum is more amenable to shifting. During these times, biology can be altered to make individuals more or less capable of enduring negative experiences. Providing positive experiences during these sensitive periods helps shift the fulcrum, making children more resilient by better enabling them to handle negative experiences later in life.
Resilience extends beyond individual children; it involves creating environments and experiences that contribute positively to their development. Resilient societies are those that prioritize stacking more positive experiences than negative ones for their children, who will become future workers and citizens.