For Families

DCRC is committed to promoting partnerships between the most important adults in a child’s life – parents, family members as well as early care and education professionals such as child care providers, teachers, and home visitors.

The resources offered in this section will provide families with ideas, activities, strategies and resources that promote resilience and social and emotional health in infants and toddlers.

For Professionals Supporting Families

Your Journey Together (YJT) is a strength-based curriculum designed to promote the social and emotional well-being and resilience of vulnerable children and their families. The YJT curriculum focuses on empowering parents to promote safe, trusting, and healing environments—all key elements of a trauma sensitive program. Click here to learn more.

Resilience & Social-Emotional Health

You might know people who have faced great risk but continue to find success and happiness despite the odds against them. They have resilience, the ability to “bounce back” from misfortune or change. Resilient people tend to have something in their lives that helps them overcome challenges and move on in positive ways. These strengths that help resilient people bounce back are protective factors.

We know that protective factors can be found in:

Your environment: The world around you (like a caring community, access to health care, and other needed resources)
Your family: Those who matter the most to you (like extended family and nurturing friends)
Yourself: Your abilities and inner strengths (like being a good problem-solver or an honest person)

All of the above types of protective factors are important. The protective factors found within you can be strengthened, despite risk or adversity in the environment or family.

The Devereux Center for Resilient Children (DCRC) works together with families and caregivers to strengthen three specific protective factors for children. These protective factors have been found to help children be better prepared for school and life and include:

Attachment/Relationships: Attachment is the ongoing, emotional relationship the child builds over time with a familiar adult through nurturing interaction. The warm connection a child has with another familiar person is called a relationship.
Initiative: Initiative is the child’s ability to use independent thought and action to meet his or her needs.
Self-Regulation (toddlers): Self-Regulation is the child’s ability to gain control of bodily functions, manage powerful emotions, and maintain focus and attention (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).

~ Source: For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Promoting the Social and Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers, 2009, pages 5-6.

These three protective factors are central in our assessments, strategies, and resources. Perhaps you are part of a program that is using the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment for Infants and Toddlers (DECA-I/T), but even if your child’s program uses another tool to measure resilience and social emotional health, our site provides a wealth of ideas to strengthen these three protective factors. For more information, contact deca@devereux.org.

Tips and Strategies That Promote Resilience

Below are suggestions taken from For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Promoting the Social and Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers. Tips and strategies are listed to help promote and strengthen each of the three DCRC protective factors for infants and toddlers; Attachment/Relationships, Initiative, and Self-Regulation.

You can also download this handout for a list of tips to support resilience in young children.

Supporting Attachment And Relationships

Let your child’s caregiver know what you do at home to comfort your child. Good communication between parents and teachers helps your child go back and forth between home and school much easier. This helps your child feel safe and comfortable.
During daily routines such as meals, bath time, and nap time, you can engage in eye contact and share smiles, conversations, stories, and books. These day-to-day interactions are a way for you and your child to continue building strong ties to each other, the foundation for later relationships.
Respond to your child’s attempts to communicate with you through facial expressions, gestures, cooing, babbling, and words. Gently mirror his sounds and expressions. Your encouraging responses help your child learn to value himself and others.

Tips For Supporting Initiative

Let your child’s caregiver know when you are working on a new self-help skill as home (such as feeding oneself, toilet training, etc.). This information will help increase opportunities for you and your child’s caregiver to work as a team.
Give your child lots of opportunities to explore and let her choose what is interesting and appropriate for her to play with. Learning to make good decisions is a skill that children will use for the rest of their lives.
Provide items for exploration and play that are open-ended and capture the imagination. Playing with a variety of different items stimulates your child’s brainpower. Try items like: pots and pans and spoons for making music, plastic bowls for stacking, scarves for dancing or playing peek-a-boo.

Supporting Self-Regulation

When an unexpected change is about to happen, give your child reminders before hand whenever possible. Rituals and predictable routines are important for your child, and he may not like for them to change. Daily routines help your child know what will happen next and give him a sense of safety and security. When a child knows what is happening next, it helps him learn to deal with frustration.
Join your infant or toddler in the thing she likes to do. Be silly, play, sing, and have fun. Help her understand and label the happy feelings you both are having. As she gets older, she will be able to let you know when she is ready for play, or when she is too sleepy or hungry, or when she just wants to be held. This will help you both get to know each other’s cues.
Create a quiet spot that your toddler can go to when she needs to control her feelings or regain her energy. This special spot will help her regroup and relax. Stay close by to let her know you are ready to help her rejoin in play when she is ready!

For more tips and strategies to build resilience and protective factors in infants and toddlers, contact deca@devereux.org

Activities To Do With Your Infant or Toddler

Promoting Protective Factors with Your Child – Selected from Promoting Resilience For Now & Forever (Infant/Toddler Edition)

For Infants

That’s my Name! Activity (pdf)
Find Delight in the Moment Activity (pdf)
Mirror Partners Activity (pdf)