Mentors and Success
In "Overcoming the Odds" , Emma Werner and Ruth Smith share their research of Kauai's indigenous children determining resiliency factors influencing a Kauai child's capacity to transcend a population rife with excessive rates of alcoholism, poverty, and suicide. Their thirty year study identified three factors influencing a child's capacity to overcome significant obstacles to become happy, fulfilled adults. The factors are not interdependent. Please find them listed below. 1. A child is more likely to overcome obstacles if no siblings are born within two years of his or her birth. Receiving focused nurturing and care in the first two years of one's life has a strong impact on one's ability to handle setbacks. This translates to primates where chimps' normal gestation cycles are five years. When a chimp's sibling is born within this five year period, the older chimp usually fails to reach adulthood. Werner and Smith also learned 2. children...