Asian Journal of Psychiatry xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

G Model

AJP-569; No. of Pages 1

Letter to Editor

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Asian Journal of Psychiatry

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Parents: A resource to promote resilience inchildren

Resilience, an expected facet of healthy development, isdynamic and contextually dependent (Masten, 2001). Resiliencepromoting factors include resources (external to the child: school,family, etc.) and assets (internal to the child: traits, abilities, etc.).Parents are primary resources for children, and parenting providesthe initial context to promote resilience.

Younger children are more likely to depend on parents asresilience promoting resources. In a cross-country resilience studyin the context of trauma, children aged 9 years and below madegreater use of ‘I have’ factors in facilitating adaptation (Grotberg,2001). These included loving and guiding care-givers whofunctioned as role-models and facilitated autonomy withinexpected limits (Grotberg, 2001). In a similar study, in comparisonto adolescents, children aged 8 through 12 years from socioeco-nomically disadvantaged backgrounds expressed parents to be aresource to negotiate through difficult situations (Chari, 2010).However, parents, when explicitly sought out, are also noted to beresilience promoting resources for adolescents (Chari, 2010;Grotberg, 2001). Specific parenting practices such as benevolentuse of praise and encouragement, speaking kindly, demonstrationof considerable affection, spending quality time through engagingin enjoyable activities, and absence of punishment have beenexplicitly noted to contribute to adaptive traits suggestive ofresiliency among children (Johnson et al., 2011).

Impinging factors within the context of parents’ lives are likelyto influence their role as resources to promote resilience inchildren. Intergenerational transmission of attachment patterssuggest that parents with less than adequate early attachmentexperiences struggle to empathize or foster security in theirchildren (Main and Goldwyn, 1984). However, parents’ ownresilience may facilitate to overcome this adversity. Parentsdisplaying resilient parenting surmount the deleterious effectsof poor bonding histories through relying on personal coping assetsrather than families of origin as support sources (Easterbrookset al., 2010; Travis and Combs-Orme, 2007). Parental mental healthis a pertinent influence on parents’ role as resources. Whiledepression and conduct disturbances in parents are disadvanta-geous to children (Minde and Minde, 2002); healthy psychologicalfunctioning may be deemed to contribute to well-being of children.Developmentally generative personality traits such as curiosity,ability to initiate and sustain activity, responsiveness to others,ability to defer immediate gratification; openness to experience,extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness; and adequate self-efficacy are more likely to promote resilience in children(Bornstein et al., 2011; de Haan et al., 2012).

In this era of resilience being construed as ‘‘ordinary magic’’(Masten, 2001), the pertinence of parents role as resources needs toexemplified. There is a necessity to shift from examining

Please cite this article in press as: Chari, U., Chandrashekhar, P., Parent(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2014.03.001

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2014.03.001

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inadequacies to competencies in parenting. This is also likely toenhance parental resilience in overcoming personal adversitieswhile striving to promote resilience in children.

Conflict of interest

There is no conflict of interest for any of the authors.

References

Bornstein, M.H., Hahn, C., Haynes, O.M., 2011. Maternal personality, parentingcognitions, and parenting practices. Dev. Psychol. 47 (3) 658–675.

Chari, U., 2010. Resiliencies in children and adolescents from lesser privilegedbackgrounds. (Unpublished M.Phil Dissertation)National Institute of MentalHealth and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, India.

de Haan, A.D., Dekovic, M., Prinzie, P., 2012. Longitudinal impact of parental andadolescent personality on parenting. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 102 (1) 189–199.

Easterbrooks, M.A., Chaudhuri, J.H., Bartlett, J.D., Copeman, A., 2010. Resilience inparenting among young mothers: family and ecological risks and opportunities.Child Youth Serv. Rev., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.08.010.

Grotberg, E.H., 2001. Resilience programs for children in disaster. Ambul. ChildHealth 7 (2) 75–83.

Johnson, J.G., Liu, L., Cohen, P., 2011. Parenting behaviours associated with thedevelopment of adaptive and maladaptive offspring personality traits. Can. J.Psychiatry 56 (8) 447–456.

Main, M., Goldwyn, R., 1984. Predicting rejection of her infant from mother’srepresentation of her own experiences: a preliminary report. Child Abuse Negl.8 (2) 203–217.

Masten, A.S., 2001. Ordinary magic: resilience processes in development. Am.Psychol. 56 (3) 227–238.

Minde, K., Minde, R., 2002. The effect of disordered parenting on the development ofchildren. In: Lewis, M. (Ed.), Child and adolescent psychiatry. A comprehensivetextbook. 3rd ed. Lippincott William and Wilkins, Baltimore, pp. 477–493.

Travis, W.J., Combs-Orme, T., 2007. Resilient parenting: overcoming poor parentalbonding. Soc. Work Res. 31 (3) 135–149.

Uttara Chari1,*

Poornima ChandrashekharNational Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences,

Hosur Road/Marigowda Road, Bangalore 560 029,

Karnataka, India

*Corresponding author at: Plot No. 7, Krithika Enclave Madhapur,Hyderabad 500 081, India.

Tel.: +91 40 23119919; mobile: +91 7306463623

E-mail address: uchari@gmail.com (U. Chari).

1Present address: Asha Hospital, Institute of Medical Psychology,Counselling, & Psychotherapy, Plot No. 298, Road No. 14,

Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India.Tel.: +91 40 66752222/23542838.

Receive 24 February 2014

s: A resource to promote resilience in children. Asian J. Psychiatry