Therapists like me listen to stories like these every day: The child who was found after 5 days with no food while her mother was on the streets; the girl whose mother repeatedly brought home men who raped them both; the kid whose alcoholic parents fought violently and cruelly night after night while he huddled in his bed; the 10 year old who struggled manfully with fear as he went through painful cancer treatments; the 8 year old who was the only survivor of her family after a fiery car crash; the 7 year old whose trusted older stepbrother molested him for years; the little boy who woke up to the sound of a bullet smashing into the wall above his bed from a drive-by shooting gone wild; the little girl who found her father dead of a heart attack when she went to his workshop to fetch him for dinner.

Some of these kids show all the signs of what is called "post traumatic stress disorder". They experience nightmares by night and intrusive memories, or flashbacks, during the day. They become hypervigilant, always scanning their surroundings to make sure they are safe. Many of them cope by "spacing out", mentally removing themselves from a life they find too threatening to experience. Often, they are unable to focus at school or in life because they are just too overwhelmed by their experiences to move on.

But the miracle I get to witness in my work is the number of kids, equally abused or shocked, who seem to be able to get on with things, do at least okay in school, and go on to lead competent adult lives where the traumatic event is a distant memory.

Researchers have been trying to understand the difference between the two groups for decades. Just why is it that some children can grow up in the most horrendous environments and still manage to be basically okay? What is it that makes the same kind of event traumatic for one child and entirely forgettable for another? What qualities, skills, and resources do the kids who cope have that other kids don't?

The answers to these questions are vitally important. If we understand what helps some kids get through the most difficult of circumstances, we can do a better job teaching all of our youngsters what they need to do should they ever have to manage the unmanageable. Hopefully they will never need to draw on these skills for extreme events. But the same skills that help people survive the impossible also help us manage the inevitable disappointments and setbacks of life.

Every parent knows that at some time in their lives our kids are going to have to deal with something. If they are like most of us, they are going to have to deal with many somethings. To really live life is to come up against risk and hardship at least once in a while. The death of a loved one, the break up of a relationship, being cut from the team, being passed over for the promotion, receiving the diagnosis of a frightening illness, etc., are all part of this thing called life. We all want our kids to be able to meet challenges like these and hopefully to even be able to grow from them.

Researchers have named the ability to cope, to bounce back from hardship, "resiliency". I've reviewed almost 50 years of research on the subject and the same principles appear with surprising consistency. In summary, here are 10 skills and attitudes that are most helpful for meeting the challenges and difficulties of life:

1. Resilient kids make positive relationships with competent caring adults throughout their childhoods. When parents can't provide it, these people often find a teacher, Scout leader, best friend's Mom, or relative who become a source of caring, concern, and positive role model.

2. Resilient kids are active problem solvers. When confronted with a problem, they get busy. Somehow they have learned that it is better to try and try and try (even to fail and fail and fail) than to lie down and give up. They've learned how to learn from failure as well as from success. They keep working at guesses, hunches, and possibilities.

3. Resilient kids know how to say no when they need or want to. They understand that it is important to their own self esteem to know they said "no" even if they aren't able to prevent something awful from happening..

4. Resilient kids can find silver linings in the most difficult of circumstances. They're the kind of people who later say, "In some ways, the tragedy(or illness, or accident, or whatever) was a kind of gift." Their emphasis is on what they learned, not on their pain.

5. Resilient kids value something about themselves. Their confidence in some truth about themselves gives them a place to start when everything around them seems pretty bleak.

6. Resilient kids, even very young ones, have developed a sense of perspective. They know the difference between an inconvenience and a tragedy. Often they have a wry sense of humor that lets them appreciate the absurdity of life.

7. Resilient kids often have a religious or spiritual dimension in their lives. Faith in something bigger than self is a resource that these people draw on in times of emergency.

8. Resilient kids have a basic belief that life is fundamentally good - even when everything around them might suggest the opposite. A basic optimism informs their lives.

9. Resilient kids aren't upset by change. In fact, the most resilient kids thrive on it. To them, change is full of opportunities to meet new people, to try new things, to learn something.

10. Resilient kids have a clear inner sense of what is right and wrong. They use this moral compass when they find themselves in situations that are new or frightening.

Notice that almost all of the traits emphasize an active approach to life. People who bounce back from trauma are people who engage with people, with the problem, with themselves, with life. Resiliency isn't about an inborn trait (although certainly there are some kids who just seem to be born optimists). It's about a problem-solving style. Our job as parents is to know what will help, to work on developing these characteristics in our own lives, to build on the resilience that is already in our kids, and to teach and reinforce what isn't.

Dr. Marie advises:

To help your children develop a resilience approach to life . . .

• Develop your own resiliency. You will be better able to manage life and you will be a better model for your children.

• Study the 10 skills and attitudes of resiliency. Talk about them with your kids. Practice them whenever the family confronts a problem.

• Encourage your kids to be active problem solvers. When they complain, ask them what they want to do about whatever is bothering them.

• Provide your children with some kind of spiritual or religious teaching.

• Encourage optimism, a sense of humor, and a sense of perspective.

• Discourage passivity, isolation, and self-pity