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During the past few decades, the landscape of the family structure has changed dramatically. The United States has seen a decrease in the “traditional” family, complete with two biological parents and consisting of one parent in the workforce and the other in a caregiver role. It is now being replaced with an ever-increasing diverse family structure. The population of children living with two parents has decreased to 69% in 2002, down from 72% in 1990 and 77% in 1980 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003) . Single-parent families and stepparent families have become more common, despite the fact that children in single-parent or divorced families are at greater risk for lower academic achievement and more likely to drop out of school or bear children at an early age, as well as displaying psychological factors including depression, anxiety, stress, and aggression ( Fields, Smith, Bass, & Lugaila, 2001 ; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994 ).

Child abuse is a pervasive societal problem, with nearly 1 million substantiated reports of child maltreatment each year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001) , many reported cases of actual abuse that are not verified (Kaufman & Zigler, 1996) , and countless other cases that are never brought to the attention of authorities (Wolfner & Gelles, 1993) . Extant research has identified a host of negative sequelae associated with child maltreatment, including deficits in interpersonal relationships, affect regulation, and self-development ( Beeghly & Cicchetti, 1994 ; Crittenden, 1992 ; Egeland & Sroufe, 1981 ; Maughan & Cicchetti, 2002 ), as well as increased rates of multiple psychiatric diagnoses ( Cicchetti & Carlson, 1989 ; Cicchetti & Toth, 1995 ; Ammerman, Cassisi, Hersen, & Van Hasselt, 1986 ; Egeland, Sroufe, & Erickson, 1983 ).

The disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) of childhood are comprised of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD) (APA, 2001) . These conditions are among the most conmionly treated in mental health settings with epidemiological studies suggesting that between 3 and 16% of all youth meet the diagnostic criteria for at least one, if not two or more, of these conditions ( Eiraldi, Power, & Nezu, 1997 ; Loeber, Burke, Lahey, Winters, & Zera, 2000 ; for review see Barkley, 1998 ; Goldstein & Goldstein, 1998). These conditions have traditionally been referred to as externalizing disorders as opposed to the internalizing disorders such as anxiety, depression, or learning disability. The former disrupt and disturb the immediate environment and are easily visible to the observer. Symptoms and impairments of the latter are not as often observed nor are environments as disrupted by affected children and adolescents.

Some of the most common psychological disorders in children and adolescents are internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety. Research on the development of depression and anxiety suggests that internalizing disorders can be reduced, even prevented, by promoting more accurate cognitive styles, problem-solving skills, and supportive family relationships. Several cognitive-behavioral interventions have shown promise in treating and preventing depression and anxiety. We review the Penn Resiliency Program as an example of such an intervention. We suggest that most of the skills covered in the Penn Resiliency Program and similar preventive interventions are not specific to depression or anxiety and can be useful for increasing young people’s resiliency more generally. Interventions that teach and reinforce these skills can help children to navigate a variety of difficult situations they are likely to encounter during adolescence and adulthood.

In this chapter we address how the factors of risk and resihence affect children with learning disabilities. Because learning disabilities encompass varied disorders associated primarily with difficulty learning, our central focus is upon children attending school. Both positive and negative school experiences shape children’s self-perceptions and contribute to their academic self-concepts. Unfortunately, for many children with learning disabihties, their lowered academic self-perceptions and self-concepts are influenced by difficulties in both the academic and social aspects of school (Vaughn & Elbaum, 1999) . In the first part of this chapter, we discuss how self-concept and, subsequently, resilience are shaped by school experiences. In the second part, we review various ways to help children with learning disabilities increase their resiliency and preserve their self-esteem and feelings of self-worth.

Self-control has been a pervasive idea in developmental psychology. At a neurocognitive level, the organism’s control (or lack of it) over its own responsiveness to stimuli has been regarded as a central topic in attention/executive function research and attention deficit (e.g., Taylor, 1995 ). Behavioral control is a more complex idea: clearly, a planned and rule-governed organization of activity can have many advantages and has arguably been a cru-cial acquisition in the evolution of man. Emotional control relates to the idea that it is adaptive to moderate the immediate affective reaction and to respond in a willed rather than a passionate fashion.

Advances in our understanding of adaptation are rooted in the seminal work of Garmezy, Rutter, Werner, and others who “discovered” a not inconsiderable proportion of children who, thought to be at risk for current and future maladaptation, showed few or no signs of pathology and often exhibited high levels of competence ( Garmezy, 1974 ; Rutter, 1979 ; Werner & Smith, 1982 ). Investigating what made a difference in this group of children’s lives led at first to descriptions of correlates of positive development among children living in high-risk contexts and has progressed to complex process models allowing for multiple causal effects across multiple ecologies (Masten, 1999a) . Two of the great contributions from this line of work have focused on elucidating the mechanisms thought to underlie both adaptive and maladaptive developmental trajectories under conditions of adversity, as well as advancing the position that studies of positive adaptation and competence should be studied alongside the more dominant models of risk, pathology, and treatment ( Garmezy, 1974 ; Rutter, 1979 ; Masten, 2001 ). These advancements in turn have been instrumental in current intervention and prevention practices (Rolf & Johnson, 1999) .

I have focused for more than 20 years on examining the impact that parents have in nurturing hope, self-esteem, and an optimistic outlook in their children (Brooks, 1999; Brooks & Goldstein, 2001, 2003 ). My intention in this chapter is to examine specific steps that parents can take on a daily basis to reinforce a resilient mindset and lifestyle in their children. Before describing both the characteristics of this mindset and strategies to strengthen it in youngsters, I believe it is necessary to address the following two questions: What is meant by the concept of resilience? Do parents really have a major influence on the development of resilience in their children?

Equal access to educational opportunity is the philosophical cornerstone of the U.S. public education system. Although significant advances toward realizing this goal have been made over recent decades, educational quality still varies widely across social strata. The agents of this inequity are familiar to most in disadvantaged educational environments: educator stress, low academic expectations, and impaired relations with students; ecological instability; and a culture that discourages academic achievement and healthy behavior—as well as a host of other circumstances that demand the attention of students and educators at the expense of learning. Although years of policy initiatives have worked to eliminate these problems, U.S. public education still falls far short of Mann’s vision.

In this chapter, we present a conceptual framework for the promotion of resilience in children that integrates concepts from the study of resilience with a public health approach to improving mental health at the population level. The chapter begins with a review of resilience and public health concepts and describes how these perspectives can be integrated within a broad framework for the promotion of health and prevention of dysfunction. We then present examples of evidence-based preventive interventions and policies that have successfully implemented components of this framework. Given our focus on promoting resilience, we limit discussion and examples of interventions to those designed to create resources for children not diagnosed with mental health disorder, although the framework could readily be extended to interventions for children with clinical levels of dysfunction. Finally, we provide an overview of how the framework might be used by planners to create resources in their communities that will promote resilience, as well as examples of tools currently available to assist planners in this process.