16 Chapter 1
Fostering Resilience
Kenneth Ginsburg and Martha Jablow’s (2015)
work speaks to the ​“7 Cs” of resiliency and
their application to youth and teens.

In recent years, these experts have begun
to tie their work back to the foundational years,
which are fostered within early childhood pro-
gram environments. In 2015 Gingsburg and
Jablow identified these seven elements:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Competence: learning how to do
“what’s right” but also learning how
to recover when consequences from
poor choices take place
Confidence: feeling the thrill of “I can”
but also the butterflies that come with feeling inadequate and the
necessary thinking strategies to determine how to make confident
choices Connection: experiencing opportunities to connect with not only
peers but adults in healthy ways, as well as learning about supports
that surround them in their community—good and bad
Character: experiencing opportunities that provide a balance of
“what’s right” and “what’s wrong” when interacting with people and
the processes or materials that are involved in these experiences
Contribution: experiencing opportunities to help and be helped
with peers and adults in the environments that they are involved
with each day
Coping: navigating all the strong emotions that come with learn-
ing about feelings and what to do with each one in consistent and
repetitive ways
Control: experiencing opportunities to lead and follow while also
practicing making choices—good and bad—with appropriate adult
guidance Each one of these elements is not an immediate know-how—meaning that we are
not born with an innate ability to know what to do in each of these areas. They
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