Families supporting children’s Prosilience 

WHAT IS ProSILIENCE?

Families play a large role in supporting their children's prosilience. It is the job of educators to continue to foster it in the classroom, as it is a completely different environment from the home and requires different structures and routines. These structures and routines can help children feel at ease and become increasingly comfortable in this new environment. The ultimate goal is to continuously work with families, through open communication, to foster resilience in children so that they may settle into the kindergarten as easily as possible and create positive relationships with their educators. In Rana’s situation, her family can help her with her settling in by communicating as much useful information to her kindergarten team as possible, such as the type of learning environment she was previously in, and what their home situation is like. They can also take the materials and advice from the educators and positively talk about her new kindergarten together. 

Prosilience can be developed based on certain factors, including the child's personal attributes (temperament, background, etc.), aspects of their family (languages spoken, history, etc.), and the characteristics of their external social environment (Masten & Powell, 2003) (Werner, 1982). Every child demonstrates their prosilience differently, and in different situations depending on their comfort level. Although prosilience can be strengthened at any age, researchers suggest that the first 6 years of life have a particularly positive impact on the development of the child's prosilience (Hoopes, 2017). From the beginning, families can support the mental health of their children and specifically support these prosilience factors in a variety of ways. Here, above all else, the environment and education of the child play the most important roles.