A Qualitative Exploration of Everyday Resilience in Kindergarten Children

Much resilience research in young children focuses on high-risk samples with marked adversity despite the broad acknowledgement that all children, regardless of levels of adversity experienced, have opportunities to engage in resilience processes (Avdagic et al., 2018; Ungar, 2019). To advance understanding of “everyday resilience”, the current study explores resilience qualitatively in a convenience sample of kindergarten children who were not selected on basis of a risk factor. Caregivers (n = 91) answered a phone interview question in which they were asked to; “Describe a time when your child overcame a difficult situation.” Responses to this indirect assessment of resilience were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Although participants were asked to speak about resilience indirectly, responses were largely consistent with well-established conceptualizations of resilience, including the social-ecological framework for resilience. Indeed, caregivers conceptualized childhood resilience as occurring across four main domains: change, peer(s), health, and rule following. In terms of resilience behaviours, caregivers reported a mix of child- and adult-initiated strategies: the most frequently reported child-initiated resilience strategies were seeking adult support and confronting the adversity, and the most common adult-initiated strategies included verbal collaboration with the child regarding the adversity and problem-solving. Findings support the use of indirect measures of resilience to reduce socially desirable responding and capture detailed and nuanced responses.