Focus 580; Ordinary Family Magic Recipes for Resilience

Today will be looking at a topic that I think some people in the field of psychology and child development have been thinking about now at least for a couple of decades and it's it's this. If you take a look at families where there are a great many disadvantages families don't function well. They may have to struggle with poverty there may be violence in the family. You could you will see and not surprisingly so that some of the children who grow up in families like that grow up to have serious difficulties of their own. However you do also see something else sometimes you see kids born into these very difficult families who despite those difficulties managed to grow into perfectly competent adults and the question that a lot of people in psychology and child behavior have been thinking about is why is that. Why is it that some kids who were born into broken families managed to grow into competent adults while others do not. It's an area that generally is referred to as family resilience. And we'll be talking this morning with a researcher who has worked in this area now for some time and Maston she is a licensed psychologist. She has

also distinguished McKnight university professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. And this is one area that she has concentrated on in her research. She is visiting the campus. She gave the spring 2005 lecture sponsored by the Pampered Chef family resiliency program. And here on the campus and we in the past have talked with a number of the speakers who have come to talk in this series and we're pleased that she could be with us. If you didn't hear her talk well you've missed it it was last night but she's been good enough to hear and be with us here on the program and talk about some of the same subject matter and of course questions are welcome they always are here on the show The only thing that we ask of callers is that people just try to be brief and to the point. That way we can get in as many different people as possible and also keep the program moving but of course anyone listening can call here in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us and that is eight hundred

to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so at any point if you have questions you are welcome Michael. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Glad to be here to begin maybe a little bit of general background on resilience and how it is and I think now it's been for at least a couple of decades people in your field have been looking at this out of the well the whole field of study of family resiliency get going. Well I think it began back in the 60s and 70s when scientists started to try to understand the causes of mental illness. And they realized some children seem to be more at risk for developing problems. And they were initially focused just on risk and understanding how problems developed. But what they discovered when they started to study children who maybe were coming out of very difficult situations or had a parent with a mental illness is that a lot of the children managed to grow up and flourish and be successful

even though they were coming out of very difficult circumstances and it surprised the researchers initially and some of the pioneers in this area realized right away that you know this is important. We need to understand how children succeed in life and come out of the you know difficult situations not just you know what causes problems in children because we want to try to help children to help families become more successful. And we could really learn something if we studied successful families and successful children who are overcoming adversity and not just always look for problems. You know what I think I take away from this the bottom line here I think it's very interesting is that it seems that initially the supposition of people who were studying these kinds of children was that somehow these kids were exceptional they were somehow exceptionally heroic brave strong everything the term

resiliency would tend to suggest but that eventually with enough study. That we come around to a rather different idea and I know in different things I have read that you have written you put it in different ways but always in a very nice turn of phrase as essentially conveying the idea that these children are not exceptional they're not they're not superhuman somehow that what they have going for them in their development are the same factors that operate in other kids. So it's it's very it's very ordinary I think that's the word that often you have applied to. That is we're really talking about very ordinary things now the circumstances may not be ordinary but the systems that function to help these kids make it is are perfectly ordinary the same that it that any other child has. That's right. And I think this surprised many researchers because I think there's attendant tendency to expect that something some sort of

magical rite stuff some special quality which is what enables children to overcome great adversity. And what it turns out to be is some pretty fundamental basic protections that we have probably protected human development since the beginning. And at the top of that list would be connections with competent caring adults most often parents and parents don't need to be exceptional they just need to be good ordinary parents who are looking doing their job and looking after their children. But of course there are a lot of children out there that don't have that kind of adult connection. Sometimes they don't have it in their immediate family and the kids who make it in those situations somehow have been connected to another adult who serves that role because that's fundamental. Kids need connections with adults. But that phrase you you mentioned ordinary I sometimes talk about ordinary magic and what I mean by that is that we

have very powerful systems that help us rear our children and that help us develop well. And if they're working if they're operating like a good parent like a healthy brain that's learning that children will can recover and do well under very difficult situations. And it sounds also as if that these children well while they may not be exceptional in terms of their ability their intelligence and so forth you do have to have them be at least kind of average of that it says it sounds like if they if they come into the world with with various kinds of deficits that that is going to be a problem in that that is going to make it more difficult for them. Right I mean some children are more vulnerable and those children may need some extra help along the way from parents teachers and so forth but. I think my point is more that to overcome and recover from great difficulty doesn't require

special talents or special kinds of parents but rather just fundamental good ole fashioned parenting and thinking and learning and communities that support children and their families. And so you know that the situations that have the most devastating effect on children and their lives are those situations that actually destroy those systems. So if in a in a natural disaster or in a war or in the kind of war that's waged in some families where you have violence if if the parents themselves are harmed so that they cannot no longer function as parents if a child is injured in such a way that they can no longer learn that has a devastating effect on development. However if you can't protect the fact that you know a child through parenting support through good nutrition if you can restore the basics for child development then

children can weather amazing storms and recover and get on with their lives. But if you destroy the family. And nobody steps in to take the place of a family for a child then a child is in real trouble. Our guest this morning is an Maston. She is a professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. And we're talking about the idea family resiliency and how it is that works and how it is that some children can grow up in really tough disadvantaged circumstances and families that don't function well. And yet given the right circumstances can grow up and to be well-adjusted competent adults we have a couple callers here and one person particularly here on a cell phone so I want to get to them so they don't have to wait too long here. It's our line number one. Hello. Hi I have two questions which I'll ask and then hang up with the first one. I remember a number of years ago David had a guest on a book about the

Holocaust survivor and the people who managed to go on to be very fruitful and happy life after having survived concentration camp. And I'm wondering whether you've made a connection between the trial of those people and the children you study today is that in court. It is actually more important. And the problem I have with implementing psychological studies into social policy. Are you concerned with the possibility that your studies will lead to basically bad social policy and give you an example. It turns out that the entire self-esteem movement which seemed to be based upon the idea that you could you make a child feel good about yourself whether or not they've done anything to deserve to feel good about. Well and they found recently that this leads to a real catastrophe when these children get into an environment of competition with other children and they find that that they're not there.

You did it. So that concerns me. And what are you doing to make sure that that didn't happen. We you know we're bad things to happen with the help of God. Thank you all. Oh well thank you. Well those are two very good questions I mean I'll address the second one first and then come back to the Holocaust survivors. That was a very unfortunate and interesting phenomenon where the self-esteem movement and basically they got the cart before the horse. And you always hope that the research that you and your colleagues do doesn't get taken up in such a way and by that I mean that it is true that resilient kids often have more self-confidence they they but they believe they can do things. But that is because they've had the experience of success and in human beings we're born. With an inclination to be motivated to

you know try to make an impact on the world so that's why even a little child in a high chair when they figure out they can throw things off the high chair they get such a kick out of tossing all their toys on the floor. When children learn to walk they get a huge kick out of toddling along we are made to experience success in mastering the environment and this is a very important system for development and also for coping with difficult situations. It's been a lot of research showing that if that system is working when people succeed and of course they need opportunities to succeed but when children have a chance to be effective in the world they get a kick out of it they get pleasure out of it and that motivates them to try again. And to persist in the future. And there are the studies of children who have been neglected in orphanages you may have heard of those you know. For example in Romania it was discovered after Ceausescu's regime fell that there were a lot of kids in orphanages who'd been profoundly

neglected they just didn't have enough adult caregivers around them. Those This system was often shut down in those children if babies are left alone in a crib to the two with no interaction with people and they never have a chance to get a response from an adult and to see that the world reacts to them. They never get a chance to play with toys and be effective. That system shuts down and you get kids who become very hopeless and apathetic and aren't responsive and you have to get that system going again. But it's a mistake to think that just creating a sense of self esteem and you know confidence that isn't built on any substantive experience of having achieved something is the way to go and I thought it was pretty clear in that these unfortunate social policy experiments that what they ended up with by focusing on only self-esteem was a group of kids that may have still

been misbehaving in ways that were totally unacceptable but feeling great about themselves which is not a good combination. And I guess I would say that the kind of self-esteem that you see in young people who've overcome great difficulty to succeed is actually that sense of pleasure that comes from real accomplishment and that you know kids having the opportunity to learn to do something to do it and to experience success and doing it is is the kind of self-confidence that I think we want to build. So I think that I hope that the kind of research that's done to try to understand. You know how children succeed will help us keep things in the right order. And I think that was one example of what can go wrong to come to your second question which was about the Holocaust survivors. There's

been of course a number of long term studies there's there was a book by Moskovitz about children who survived the Holocaust in particular. And there you know I think that it's hard to imagine some of the any worse experiences than some of these children went through losing everything familiar living in concentration camps similar situation occurred in Cambodia during the time of Pol Pot when you know there was horrible genocide perpetrated on a population and a lot of children lost their families were sent to work camps in this sort of thing. And they saw unbelievable. Things ranging from their families being killed and tortured to many many other things that we don't want to think about that happen to children in war time and over the years.

The Holocaust survivors from Europe I think have have taught us that there are first of all there's a lot of recovery. But also there are different ways that people recover. Some people need and want to share and talk about their experiences whether it's during therapy or just sharing with their friends and families and other survivors express their experience through literature through art through telling their stories through being a witness. I mean I know that many of you have probably been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and there's a a room there first where you hear the voices of survivors who talk about their story and their survival. And that may be a very important healing process for some individuals but for other individuals they find it best for their lives to let go of the past and move on.

And a lot of the holocaust survivors have grown up and be you know married and had children and gone on with their lives and done very well. And some of them have not addressed the experiences they had and have kept quieter. So I would would say that I've learned from talking to some of these survivors and also from doing research with Cambodian young people who came out of that Holocaust situation. That there's a lot of different ways to make it. But the common it the common ingredients that I see across these situations is that very young children who overcame Holocaust war type situations all had adults who were looking out for them. I see that as fundamental for the survival of young children and competent caring adults not not always their family members some of the in some of the concentration camps of course children were separated or their parents were lost

and other adults trying you know kept an eye on them and helped them along the way. And then other adults as they left the camps and were. Adopted or taken to Great Britain England all over went to Israel and so forth that the reestablishment of family of connections with people was very very important in the Cambodians who have come to Minnesota where I live. After the war and made a new life there some of the young people came unaccompanied without any family members. Many of them have had not only the help of caring adults and families but they've also been helped by the reestablishment of their cultural traditions and in the case of the Holocaust where a whole culture is being systematically destroyed. Which was true in Germany and was also true

in Cambodia. I think it's been very important to to recover the cultural traditions and among the Cambodian people their very important religious practices are very important. Dancing and language should dishes that they have recovered now and begin to teach their children again and call it cultures for centuries have provided people with rituals with ceremonies with traditions that can be very helpful in not only dealing with adversity but also recovering over the long term. I hope it gets to the question of the caller we have some others. We will continue to talk with our guest with us our focus 580 and mast and she is a licensed psychologist. She's also distinguished McKnight university professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota visiting the campus. She gave this year's Spring 2005 lecture in the Pampered Chef family resiliency program talking about this concept of family

resiliency question certainly welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I just thought I would mention here very quickly that I don't usually do this but I do want to mention tomorrow morning's 10 o'clock hour because it connects certainly with some of the things that we're talking about here this morning tomorrow morning in the 10:00 o'clock hour we will be talking with Karen Land Grant who is chief of child protection at UNICEF. She's going to be here on the campus to give this year's Daniel Sanders peace and social justice lecture That's tonight on the campus talking on the topic children in the crossfire can they be protected. And so if you're here in around Champaign-Urbana you can go and hear that lecture tonight but of course if you can't she will be here on the program tomorrow morning in the 10 o'clock hour and there will talk with us so maybe we'll get in the same some of the same issues and some different sorts of things. But I did definitely want to mention that we have some other callers here and we will talk next with someone who is listening up in Aurora on our line number four the toll free line. Hello.

Yeah hi good morning again. I'm sure I could be up but I just saw what I would tell my story for whatever it's worth for anybody else that might be listening. I was brought up in the Great Depression with a mother that worked long hours and we were all left alone all the time and had no body to. I mean. We just didn't have anybody taking care of us period. And the three of us survived. We didn't survive very well. I I and I I noticed that other children were taking care of where we were. We weren't you know I didn't notice at a very early age. I must have been about nine when I noticed other mothers took care of their children. My mother of course was an immigrant and didn't have the benefit of a you would you're speaking about the people in Cambodia connections.

And we lived away from her connections but we did go to where her people live didn't do you off about once a month. Every season and I noticed my mother was happier with the people. But when I as I was growing up I decided that I would not be like my mother in many respects that my lifestyle would be different. And I began at a very very early age to read about being brought up and about children and especially when my children were coming. I read every book or every article about how to bring up children so that they would be brought up and be happy and that they of war ways. You know I wondered when I was young what is the right way what is the correct way so somebody will be happy in life. I thought about that a lot in life.

Of course the fact that we lived in the Great Depression was very difficult. You know with no food et cetera. But then when I got older and I found about out about therapy and that you could go to somebody and tell them their problems and find out the solution. That was my greatest. Greatest thing I ever did for myself and for my family. I let everybody you know I go to therapy. It's no big secret because I feel if I learned how to do things. The right way and provide happiness in our family. That's a very very good thing. My sister my oldest sister of course she would not ascribe to that at all. And her family has fallen apart. It's very sad what has family is she makes a lot of the mistakes that my mother made.

And see I vowed if I could I wouldn't make the mistake my mother made. I just thought for anybody out there that wants to get a handle on how to improve their life I'm not telling them to go but I'm saying that I went. In a better fit in my life and my children's especially. I want to thank you for calling and sharing your story. I think you must have been a very special young person who was cause I picturing you as you spoke. You were searching and you didn't give up hope. And you looked in books to learn. I'm wondering if you're still on. If I if you had any connections with teachers along the way who encouraged you at school. I had a few too. I

was very shy. OK. Because some day I feel as if something. You know you had a very positive experience somehow with learning and I think as a searcher and a thinker that you had one of the other special qualities we often see in resilient young people which is that they have they're good at figuring things out they're good thinkers and I have talked with a number of young people over the years who were in very difficult situations like you were in as a child and they kind of figured out this isn't the way it's supposed to be. And they chose they went down different roads but on the same kind of search you were on to try to make their life different some connected with teachers some with people in the church some found parenting figures outside of the family and some like you found their road through the help of a therapist somebody who

could help them read you know really think their life and go down a different road from their own parent. I wanted oh go ahead. I think that you know what I think also is like OK it's OK to go talk to somebody about you. Find a couple of solutions. You can decide which one you want to take. My children have done that with their marriages and saved marriages. I mean it's so important for the children to find out what mom did it more for her. So I think I'll do what I don't right and I think it's very important that we speak out the way you are today on the radio and be comfortable. It's almost like consulting with a can coach. For some of the you know somebody who can help solve some you know help some of life's difficulties. I wanted to mention some research that I think is very you know fits well with the story you've told us

to. There's been quite a bit of research on children who are not like your family in the Great Depression growing up with a lot of deprivation. But children who have grown up in families where there's a lot of maltreatment too where a parent was abusing the children. So there was file a it's within the family. And when these families have been followed over time it's often been the case that children coming out of these families who become so successful parents and many of them do have like yourself found their way to therapy and gotten help to talk through and work out. The the issues that came out of their family and helped to become very effective parents themselves. Well that's the thing. And it would you discuss this. Why are people so afraid. So that's not the

correct word terminology but there's such a sense of like that I can't mention that. That's terrible. Sure it is. What's so bad about discussing it and mentioning it looking for a solution. I know. I think that a big part of the problem is the the stigma associated with seeking help. I don't know why that's come about in our country but I think that we're much more likely to talk about going to a doctor to get help for a medical problem of some sort. Nobody seems to have any problem talking about that. But many of the people I know even professionals in the mental health field seem to have a problem talking about seeking help for a mental health issue or a personal problem like you know having trouble with parenting or alcohol or other difficulties. These are incredibly common among people and yet I think I agree

with you that many people are. You know afraid to talk about needing help it's as if there are going to be stigmatized in their life and I think until people you know speak out more and more and people begin to realize these problems are just like you know going to the dentist or doctor for any kind of health problem we're not going to see a change in that so I really appreciate you calling in talking so open about that. Could I just mention just Sal. That was my bible just will bring up my children. Looking up the age group you know from 5 to 10 and then from 10 to 15 and looking up when I remember that day my daughter came home and she says you know mom she's 14. I don't have a friend. And I thought to myself you had friends before you went to school. It's three o'clock why don't you have friends that when I'm think of what happened in those hours. So I got out the book

and sure enough there it was. She sells that at 14 to 14. Think she doesn't have any friends. So I just said I just let it go. No big problem. She'll get over it when she's 15. You know and I think turning to a book for answers you know that was a small answer right you agree that was a small problem. But sometimes it ain't there. There's other solutions that are bigger problems and there are other solutions to it. I think we're looking for and discussing and talking and coming up with something that satisfy it lets you sleep at night. So thank you too for your program. Okay thank you. Thank you and let me just add one more comment. This is another example of how this caller used books to learn about the world and in this case she's talking about the whole series of books about child development that were published and have

been republished over the years. But it's an awful lot of good information out there about children that parents can consult. I also wanted to mention that I think this caller would really enjoy a book by Glenn elder. Who is a scientist but who has written a wonderful book. From his studies of children who grew up during the Great Depression. So the title of the book is Children of the Great Depression was published a number of years ago probably close to 30 years ago now but a new edition was put out on the 24th and 25th anniversary of its publication and it is a wonderful book about how children fared during the Great Depression. And it he was able to do this book because it so happened that there were two longitudinal studies of children that were ongoing when the Great Depression happened and they kept continued to follow the children all the way through those years. And he has studied the

children who suffered as their parents went through enormous hardship and he saw he also emphasizes in this book the children who did well and what made a difference I think our caller and others out there would probably find it a very interesting book to read. Well we have some other callers we will get right to and just shut up. To me I should introduce the guest for this hour and Maston and she is distinguished McKnight university professor at the Institute of Child Development University of Minnesota. She's a licensed psychologist and works in the area of child development and we've been talking here about the concept of family resiliency and again the kind of question that people in child development have been interested in and doing research on now for several decades. The quick basic question being how is it that in some cases children who grow up in families with a lot of problems and disadvantages. Certainly some of those kids have tough time but you can also find those who have done fine and done just well just fine. And the question is why. What is that makes the difference. We have some other folks

here to talk with and we'll go next to a caller in. I believe the Witt County Illinois hello. Good morning. The reason I answered children sure this is you know we should rejoice and they have is a testimony to the human spirit the strength of the human spirit that a child in a disadvantaged kid turned out well. Well I wonder did you speak today the converse problem of someone in a privileged background. Sound like Paris Hilton comes to mind or Scott Peterson knows people who have all the advantages and yet they turn out rotten. What did you say about that. Well you know of course there's a lot of interest in all the ways that children turn out in terms of trying to understand what makes a difference in children's lives. And there are people out there colleagues of

mine who are just now starting to do a lot more research on advantaged children and their lives and what kind of problems do they have what kinds of risk factors are there for their children. We sometimes assume that you know having a lot of money or a fancy house really means that you're an advantage child but of course if you look behind closed doors often you learn that on this what looks like advantage on the surface is actually a child who may have just as much deprivation as a child who's living in poverty because of course for children some of the most important kinds of advantages have to do with the quality of the parenting that they're receiving the involvement of their parents or their connections with other people so that's one part of the story that sometimes the children who appear to be privileged. Are not truly rich in the relationships that matter.

The other thing is that some children simply come into the world more vulnerable for whatever reason. They have more difficulty and they may need a very special kind of attention and perhaps they don't always get it but it's I don't feel like we know as much as we should about advantaged families and their children and of course these families often don't volunteer to be part of research studies they keep. They want to stay behind the tall walls the screen doors and so forth then. So I think it's hard to know exactly what's going on. The colleague of mine who's doing some very interesting research in this area right now is Sonia Luthor and she's a professor at Columbia University who also studies resilience and she's studying some of the wealthy very wealthy suburban communities of New York City. And she's

finding very high risks for risk levels for particularly in young adolescents for substance abuse for depression and other problems that things are not as you know all OK that the kinds of problems that children have may differ. And sometimes there aren't parents around monitoring children in wealthy homes just like we heard from the caller who grew up in the Great Depression. Sometimes a parent doesn't because they have to work and they don't have the resources to keep adults around. Other times you have two professional parents who are consumed with their jobs that aren't around. So those would be my comments on that I do think that happens and that we need to understand more about it. I don't think when you look closely it's as mysterious as it first seems I think that trying to think about what what does it really mean to be an advantage child.

I would certainly put. Close family relationships at the top of my list for advantage and some wealthy children don't have that advantage. Well I hope that gets at least in part the question of the color of a couple of others and we're moving into our last 15 minutes. Excuse me. And again our guest with us part of focus 580 is an Maston. She's a professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in particular we've been talking about that the question of family resiliency is something that she's done a lot of research on. We'll go next to a caller in Chicago and this should be line number two. Hello. Hello good morning. You say that you couldn't imagine experience worse than the Holocaust and I would think you probably think of child soldiers is worse and I know that you want to try to bring attention to that because it's a problem that affects most of the continent maybe not North America but certainly South America. And I look wonder and I know that they have tried to do some rehabilitation of child soldiers

especially in Mozambique and Angola. And I wonder if you're familiar with any of those studies. Are those chilled. When ever able to. Survivor their past experience and stablish family relationship. But don't you know I'm not familiar on all of the research as those children have grown up. But certainly I have colleagues who are following the young child soldiers and as you say I don't even know if it's important to compare the horror of the experiences these children have gone through. LA is on a certainly on the scale of catastrophe of these other child survivors of war and I know that the some of the child soldiers in Mozambique it's been very difficult first to to you know bring them back and connect them to families and villages of origin. And there's it's been very difficult in part because a

lot of these children were forced to commit atrocities against members of their own family and village. And the one theme that has stood out in my mind as I've heard the reports of people who have tried to help with the situation either on the behalf of the U.N. or have worked with these children directly is that. Forgiveness is a very important theme and you know in a village you know that where a child is brought back that there has to be some sort of process or which rituals of forgiveness. But it is probably most difficult for a child to forgive himself who's been through this kind of situation. I hope that we will learn more about this over time. Of course I'd like to see a world where we have fewer and fewer and eventually

no child soldiers particularly these children that are kidnapped into service in these are you know guerrilla warfare is going still going on all over the world. But the rehabilitation process has has been a difficult one I understand but I would certainly feel that. The core ingredients of recovery would be very similar to the recovery from a lot of other awful experiences with children which is you know being in a situation where you have very positive adults around you and a chance to do something positive. A lot of kids after war whether they've been child soldiers or simply caught up as bystanders and warfare. One of the problems that teenagers have is they feel like their world has been destroyed and there's no future and hope for them. And I think a lot of kids including

some of these child soldiers really have benefited from opportunities to do something to be appreciated by their communities to be part of rebuilding efforts to be part of helping younger children. I think that the belief that life has meaning and that an individual child has a future can be rebuilt. But after these terrible experiences it may may take a while. But kids have any opportunities not only to be part of a family and community but to contribute to do something to help rebuild. Well that has been the comparison. I think there's a difference between the Holocaust and be quiet. When a war experience and being a child soldier in that war by nature destroys the the social structure and life as people know it but the people who use chill chill child soldiers intentionally often make them do things

that make them a totally a pariah in breaking the social bonds such as quite often they have they are forced to assassinate a family relative and that a family member. And that's why I'm wondering if it's even harder to rehabilitate these children because even should the social structure reassemble itself after a war these children by the what they've had to go through are outside our pariah. And that's why I was wondering if their rehabilitation was particularly difficult. And as I said I haven't done direct research on this myself but it is my understanding that it can be very difficult but that there are successful efforts in different places of the world where people are working with these young people and trying to rebuild you know connections with communities sometimes in community of origin which can be very difficult for the reasons you mention and sometimes in new communities.

Thank you. Thank you. Let's go to Urbana lie number three for someone else Hello. Yeah hello. Actually just a two part question. It's my understanding since there's been an increase in terms of depression and I think particularly mild depression. From this group from 1964 born into that in the scenes it's been increasing. So if you look at you know your group versus you know this group the general group are there some similar factors or what would you account for this. So it sounds like your question is is depression increasing among young young people. Right. There is of course sometimes it's hard to get really great data on this because people always wonder well are we doing a better job measuring this now our children more revealing about what's going on now. But my take from the people who do research on

depression in young people is that there does appear to be an increase in depression. That is not totally understood at this point. And I think many people feel that there may be aha stress level that is in part accounting for this that. Particularly in early adolescence in our time we have the largest what people call maturity gap probably ever. And human history meaning that children young people in a lot of the industrialized advantaged countries economically are maturing earlier and earlier and many people are aware of this particularly obviously in girls. Puberty is starting earlier and earlier and yet it's taking longer and longer in the United States and similar economies for young people to get going in life so we've now even had to invent a whole new phase of

life we call emerging adulthood or something like that because people are often not ready to kind of you know move out on to their own to their in their mid to late 20s so we have this huge long period where kids are adolescents and you have a lot of changes occurring in those particular in that early adolescent window. And at the same time we particularly United States we have a lot of adults who are incredibly busy. And not you know not providing a lot of what people in my profession like to call scaffolding sort of a support structure to help kids negotiate these periods of great change and you have all of the changes of the media. I mean kids are learning about and experiencing things all kinds of information through very different kinds of media than I might have experienced as a as a teenager many years ago so you

have a very complex world there being you know kids are being inundated with information. You have this sort of constant downward trend of kids becoming teenagers in effect and what they do and think about earlier and earlier we have fewer adults out there providing support to kids during this period of transition parents who have to work many hours often to succeed in life. And so people are wondering are do we just have you know a cohort of young people who are simply. Negotiating a lot of change with less support and experiencing it in the form of stress which is contributing to depression. That's a long answer to your question but I think a lot of my colleagues who are interested in depression in young people are wondering about that whether we just have what we're seeing as a function of the US a burden a

strain on young people that they're dealing with more and more change a world it's going very fast. A growing up too soon in many ways without as much support as even they used to have. We're unfortunately just about the time when we're going to have to stop and I wish we could continue our lot of things we talk about. For you talk about the fact that for children to succeed there really need to have a stable reliable adult in their life it would be nice if that was a parent but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Fortunately I can give you but a minute to answer the question I'm just curious about who it is. If it's not parents who it turns out to be for some kids well that's a great question and I've seen it be many different kinds of people and there are many autobiographical accounts by famous people who talk about the importance of these adults sometimes. It's a relative grandmothers and fathers have played a very important role in resilience. Sometimes it's neighbors in stable areas who just strike up a

friendship with a child or they have a common interest. Sometimes as a teacher and as children get older more often it's a mentoring type of figure. And often somebody they meet through their daily life at school at church other times it's a mentor who is part of a program like big brothers or Big Sisters or some other kind of mentoring program which is deliberately established to help young people so I think it's important that young people have opportunities where they can come into contact with competent and and pro-social adults that they have a chance to form mentoring relationships with. But it can come in many different forms but that connection appears to be a very important protective factor for child development. Well I want to thank you very much for being with us we appreciate it. Thank you. And Maston She is professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of

Minnesota.