Focus on the Family

Guest (Male): Hey parents, for almost 40 years, Adventures in Odyssey has been helping kids like yours form relationships with Christ. Now, the animated Adventures in Odyssey film, Journey Into the Impossible, will reach a new generation of families. But we need your help to finish the film and launch it in theaters.

Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar before May 1st. See the trailer and donate today at focusonthefamily.com/impossible. That's focusonthefamily.com/impossible. This program is sponsored by Focus on the Family, a listener-supported ministry helping families thrive in Christ.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: We want them to have the ability to overcome difficult things because they will experience difficult things. It's something that we need to exercise. So, what we want to do is not protect them from every bit of stress but instead cultivate that ability to overcome.

John Fuller: That's Dr. Nicole Wilke, sharing about resilient children and her observation that many children can overcome hardship, even trauma. She'll offer hope today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, every child faces some sort of adversity. If you just stop and think of junior high, that's nothing but adversity. I remember being punched in the chest because I was not filled out yet by an older junior. I think I was a freshman, and he just hit me in the chest and said to his friend, "See, he's not filled out like us yet."

I was sitting there wheezing. Later, that guy accepted Christ after high school, and I saw him a couple of summers ago. He called, and it was fine. We forgave. So the trauma was closed. But that's it. That's just a little, maybe more humorous idea there, but children hit the wall for some reason. "I don't look the right way, I don't feel the right way, I think that person is better than me." All those things begin happening, like at junior high.

I often quote the scripture you've heard me say this many times, Psalm 34:18, which says, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those crushed in spirit." That was my mantra as a boy growing up as an orphan. You had to find places to say, "Lord, do you see me? Do you know me?" I felt that all along, so He really did reinforce that.

As you said, we invited a psychologist today, and I'm looking forward to talking with her about children and resiliency.

John Fuller: She'll bring personal experiences and research to help parents really understand and guide children to help them thrive. Dr. Nicole Wilke serves as director of the Center on Applied Research for Vulnerable Children and Families, which is an initiative of the Christian Alliance for Orphans. She's written a book that captures a lot of what we're talking about today. It's called *Overcoming: What Scripture and Science Say About Resilience*. You can learn more about our guest and this book at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Nicole, it is nice to have you here at Focus on the Family, all the way from Peru. What a journey. Thanks for making that journey.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Hey, thank you for having me. I'm so grateful to be here.

Jim Daly: Now, for the viewers and the listeners, I've got to ask that question. What are you doing in Peru?

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Well, we've been there almost eight years, and my husband leads a care reform coalition called Peru por los Niños, where he works with churches, NGO leaders, and leaders in government to change the system of care for vulnerable and at-risk children in Peru.

Jim Daly: That's amazing. Globally, I saw some of this data, I think we may have gotten it out of your book, but globally up to 20% of children and adolescents endure some kind of debilitating mental illness. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents. When you look at the CDC here in the U.S., the last survey I saw was like 50% of young people have had depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation. That's a big number.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Oh, undoubtedly. I don't see that changing drastically anytime soon. We are in a time, in an era of increasing technology, increasing separation, isolation relationally, increasing chaos. If we look at scripture, this isn't a surprise for us. We know that there are times of chaos, there are times of seeing the brokenness of this world.

And yet, we can be confident that God has ordained for our children to be born in this very time, for such a time as this. So, we have the tension to hold between both seeing the chaos of the world and the brokenness of the world, the world in which they're growing up in, and recognizing that He has special plans and purposes for our kids even in spite of that.

Jim Daly: Let's move into it. You were raised in a foster and adoptive family. You were a bio child, but your mom and dad had I think over 70 kids come through the home, and they adopted nine kids. That's a robust family, a lot of dynamics. What do you think that taught you as a child?

Dr. Nicole Wilke: I will say that it was one of the most educational and demanding experiences of my life, undoubtedly formative and beautiful. I can say very easily that the Lord gave me a gift in that, an education, an understanding that I could never have had without that experience because these are not numbers or ideas to me. These are people, these are my closest people, who I love so dearly.

When I saw their experiences, and mine as being a part of this whole family system, I think that's where I started to realize God's redemption amidst these horrible things. Because, of course, you ask the question, why? Why did they experience these hard things: abuse, neglect, violence, exploitation—the things that we're seeing kids face in this world? Why is that happening?

The truth is, I don't have a perfect answer for that, and I don't think anyone will this side of heaven. And yet we can still trust in a loving God, in a sovereign God who has good plans for these kids. Part of it is seen through that lens of watching them overcome these difficult things and go on to thrive as contributors to society, as people who are building the kingdom.

Jim Daly: What are some key factors for us when we experience trauma to try to get through that?

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Especially speaking about our kids, I think the first thing that we can do is be present. So much of this is about our presence, which sounds like a very simple idea until we recognize that we all have a world of information and addiction in our pockets.

A lot of it is about being present. We're going to normalize and validate the experience. We're going to say, "Wow, you're right, this was hard. This was hard for you." Even if I'm thinking it was an accident with 30 miles an hour, you're fine, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, "I see that for you, this was tremendously difficult."

After validating, we're going to normalize and say, "Around the world, many children have experienced this, many families have experienced this. I'm so sorry." We're going to lament with our children. "I'm so sorry that this was your experience. I wouldn't have chosen this for you. This isn't what I want for you."

And then we're going to offer hope. "Together, there is nothing that with God's help we can't overcome. I'm here with you. I'm staying here with you."

Jim Daly: And I think what's so hard for that person is that scripture even is hard to believe because they don't feel it, they don't seem to experience that, and it keeps them locked like the gravity of a black hole. It just pulls them in and they do often need help to be able to get free of the grip of that fear.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: I think what you said is so important, the element of feelings, because feelings are important. And yet, often society, media, culture would have you believe that feelings are reality, this is your reality.

So, we have a saying in our family that I learned from a missionary friend years ago: feelings are indicators, not dictators. We can acknowledge the feelings. Feelings are pieces of information. They give you a signal, so we want to attend to them. Is this telling me something I need to know, or is this something that is guiding me in the wrong path?

At the risk of being controversial, "follow your heart" is not the best or most sound advice. So, I think when we're dealing with feelings, we want to attend to them, we want to acknowledge that that is the real experience of the person, especially if we're dealing with children, this is their real experience. And yet, we want to help guide them through those feelings so that they can recognize them, acknowledge them, and move past them.

Jim Daly: Nicole, let me ask you about this. Again, you heard a little of my background. My mom and dad divorced at five. My mom remarried, then she died a year later when I was nine. I ended up in foster care. Then my bio dad, I got back with my bio dad, he then died when I was 11, and I ended up living with one of my siblings who was older than me.

That had its own chaos because it was just without boundaries. It was an odd way to do this. But here's the thing, and I so appreciate the Lord's grace in all that. I accepted Christ at 15 through a football coach. But the dynamic of it, one thing I can remember is I never felt guilty about people's behavior: my dad's alcoholism, my stepdad's distance, my foster dad's craziness.

I was able even as a child to be able to say, "That's their problem, not my problem." I always point to that because I think that was what God's grace did for me, because so many children end up processing that as "What did I do wrong? Why do I have this dad?" or "What did I cause him to drink over?" Describe that importance, because that is the resilience factor, the key of saying, "Okay, I'm strong enough, that wasn't my fault, that was their fault." How do you develop that in your child?

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Well, it's a great question. I think in your particular situation, it sounds like even through your coach that you mentioned, there were sources of support. One of the things that we did was a study of more than a thousand adults with care experience—adults who had been separated from their biological families and had ended up in foster care, adoption, orphanages, children's homes, things like that.

We wanted to see what worked for them, what helped them to thrive. A lot of it went back to supportive relationships. I think we see our place in the world, especially as children, through the lens of the people around us.

When we're thinking about how to support our kids, number one is building into that relationship. Recognizing that to help them build resilience, we're going to need to require certain things of them, which we can get to in a minute. But in order to be able to require things of our children, we need to have filled their bucket.

If we're going to be pulling out of their bucket, if we're going to be requiring things of them, we need to be pouring into that. We're doing that through things like connection, presence, eye contact, having times of play, or listening to the thing that they want to talk about that we're like, "Oh my word, I cannot handle this for one more minute."

We're going to handle it for one more minute because we know it's important to them. We're going to not treat them as children to be controlled or modified, but really human beings who need our input. Then that gives us the relational capital to start to help shape and form their thinking, their behaviors, which then leads to informing their feelings about their experience.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and our guest today is Dr. Nicole Wilke. She's done the research, she's got the experience, and we're talking about some of her experiences and understanding as captured in her book, *Overcoming: What Scripture and Science Say About Resilience*. Get a copy of the book from us here at the ministry at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Dr. Wilke, you've mentioned the importance of relationship here, and it's not just an individual, but you've got three layers of protective relationships. Describe those.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: When we think about resilience, we have this formula. The formula is difficult or challenging experience plus protective factors, and those together will lead to resilience. When we think about those protective factors, a lot of them are in the context of those relationships.

We have the relationship that one has with oneself: those internal dialogues, the internal elements of understanding your identity in Christ, understanding how He made you, understanding gifts. We have the family as the second level, the family layer of relationships where we're seeing things like healthy communication, warmth.

Even in your situation, having a sibling who was willing to care for you. You're seeing things like a positive atmosphere in terms of learning and curiosity. Then you're having your community-based factors, things like not growing up in a war zone is a protective factor. Things like having teachers that pour into you, coaches, medical staff that can help care for you when you're sick. These all have incredible power. Let's call them advantages. It's this idea of counteracting the disadvantages of adversity with the advantages that children have in life, and our hope is to counterbalance that and weigh it out with having more advantages than disadvantages.

Jim Daly: This is so affirming so many things that I've thought of. I didn't go for my PhD in psychology, but I've often thought life is we're in this box that's tilted toward finding God. The things that we experience, the hardship along with the good things, I feel like it's all tilted for us to find Him, to realize we're not perfect people, that we're sinners saved by grace, and then there's the opportunity of salvation.

That's a great story, especially for people that are downtrodden. I think children's hearts just open up. That's why all the programs for Christian kids or non-Christian kids in school, the release time and things like that, because it's such a vital moment, second, third, fourth grade, trying to figure out what life is all about. And then some adult comes along and says, "I know what life's all about," it's reassuring. That's why the church is so critical.

In that context, you describe a sweet spot of stress. Most people are going to say a sweet spot of stress, you've got to be crazy, stress is something we want to get away from, to run from. What is the sweet spot of stress?

Dr. Nicole Wilke: What you just mentioned is so vital, because one of the ways that we recognize that we are not human beings who have it all together, we are not sufficient, the way we recognize our insufficiency and our dependency often is through suffering.

If everything goes easily for us, why do we need God? Why do we need Christ's work on the cross if we think that we're in some way equal to God or make an idol of self? It's a hard truth, it's a hard pill to swallow, but when we look at scripture and Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart because I have overcome the world," that's the context in which we want to see stress and hardship and challenge.

We will all have stress, and in fact science says that we need to have stress to be successful. There's something called the Yerkes-Dodson model, and essentially it's an upside-down U-shape. We're looking at how stress and adversity predict success. What we see is that if somebody has the extremes, either way too little stress or way too much stress, extreme adversity and trauma, they are much less likely to achieve success long-term.

But when we have some stress and adversity in our life, combined with some times of less stress and robust support systems, that is what gives us the capacity to overcome long-term. That's actually a muscle that we want our kids to have. We want them to have the ability to overcome difficult things because they will experience difficult things. It's something that we need to exercise. So, what we want to do is not protect them from every bit of stress but instead cultivate that ability to overcome.

Jim Daly: That's so good. We're a little as parents, I think, I was, I won't speak for all parents here, but negligent to want to create safety, comfort, and especially in Western civilization, that could be a great mistake.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Absolutely. Let me give you an example of how we think about this in our family. By God's ordination, my children have a mother who studies resilience, so you can just imagine what that entails. My kids, thankfully, have not experienced extreme adversity. But I know that in order for them to be successful long-term, they need to have hurdles that they need to overcome.

That can look like when our child has a difference of opinion with her ballet instructor, and she tells me about it and I say, "What do you think you need to do?" She says, "Well, I think I need to talk to her." I say, "Okay, so do you want me to pray with you? Do you want me to roleplay with you? Do you want me to..." I'm giving her this menu of options, and she wants them all, but what I'm not doing is I'm not doing it for her. I won't have the conversation.

Then we do things like we live in the mountains and we climb mountains with our girls. From a young age, actually last year, they summited 15,200 feet, and that's a significant undertaking. But the incredible thing is when they do things like that, when we come back on Monday and they're working on their math facts and that's hard for them, I can say, "Whoa, whoa. Okay, so I know that you're saying you struggle with this, but two days ago you just finished a 30-mile hike at elevation, and I understand that this is challenging, but let's just consider this in context."

What that does for them is it makes them say, "Of course I can do math facts. Please, what am I thinking?" It gives them that confidence because they've exercised that muscle of doing hard things. Now, that can be the pre-fabricated experiences that we're giving them, or it can be where our kids have experienced hard things that we would never assign to them. We would never give them those types of experiences, but we can say, "Listen, let's look at scripture. Let's look at Joseph, let's look at David, let's look at Esther. Let's look at how God takes what the enemy means for evil and uses it for good. And what does that mean to your story?"

When I was a kid, I had my own situation. My appendix burst in my body, and they didn't find it for two years. So, I was bedridden. I remember laying in bed one day with my mom, and I am just ranting about the situation and very unwell physically and mentally.

I remember her saying, "Nicole, as I listen to you, I know that God is going to do something great." I was 14, so I didn't, I couldn't acknowledge, I was too cool. I blew right past it externally, but it registered in my brain. It changed everything for me to think that there was a possibility that God could take the hardest thing I'd ever experienced, that I didn't understand, that I had no explanation for, that didn't fit in the box that I created for Jesus in my life. And yet He could use that for His glory and for my good. It changed everything. I think that's a gift that we can give to kids when they've experienced difficult hardships.

John Fuller: As you're describing that, Nicole, earlier as you were talking about some of these interactions, it felt to me like what I did with my children, which was I gave them logic and I gave them truth, but I really didn't connect with them at that place of emotion as you said earlier, we need to feel with them. So, was your mom feeling with you when she said, "I think God's got something for you here?"

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Oh, 100%. She kept putting my focus on what was yet to come. It's super interesting, I didn't know it at the time, but one of the protective factors we see in research is a future orientation. Helping our kids to see what is yet to come, even if it's not in detail, is a vital practical step that can pull them out of that vortex that they're in.

Jim Daly: Nicole, this time has flown by, but I think parents are getting the idea of some things to be mindful of. Hopefully, they'll get your book. I want to end with the cookie story that you had with your daughter because I think it's a fun place to end, but there's so much we couldn't get to in the book. That's the idea here, we whet the appetite, and people that are going, "That's for me," then we'll give you the invitation to get a copy of Nicole's book at the end here. But speak to the cookie story.

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Well, when my oldest daughter was nine months old, I was a stay-at-home mom and she was my sidekick. She did everything with me. I would bake a lot with her. She loved baking. Of course, you know how this goes with toddlers. I'd sit her on the counter while I baked. She's putting her hand in the flour and flinging it everywhere, and she's grabbing the chocolate chips and putting them in her mouth.

It was chaos. A sign of intelligence from a young age, absolutely. She was just making a mess of it, but she's thinking she's helpful. So, I thought, I have got an idea, I know how to quell the chaos. While she's taking a nap, I make a quadruple batch of cookies. I put the dough in Ziploc bags and stick them in my freezer.

When she wakes up, we can bake together. So, I sat her on the floor, and I put a cookie sheet next to her, and I would break off pieces of the frozen cookie dough and hand it to her and she'd toss it onto the pan. We'd bake them, and then when Daddy got home, she would give him one proudly. "Look at what I did."

I'm thinking to myself, "I have really arrived. I've hacked parenthood. Look at me." In that moment one day, the Holy Spirit just said to me, "You know that's you. That's you with ministry, with parenting, with everything that you're doing in life. I could do all of this without you. And frankly, I could do it better. But because I love you, I have invited you into the high and holy calling of joining me in building the kingdom here. Not because of what you bring, because you don't bring anything that I didn't give you. But because I love you, and I want to spend time with you."

At the same time, it was both very, very humbling, of course, and incredibly freeing because there's no way that I can mess this up. God is God. He's sovereign. He's going to pursue His purposes. But He's invited me along in the journey.

Jim Daly: Isn't that great? That is true for each and every one of us. That is God's loving kindness toward us: "Join me in what I'm doing to help others." It's such a beautiful thing. Boy, your mom and dad certainly have done that. 70 foster kids. They're my heroes. To be able to do that, and then the great experience that you had in learning from that and your own difficulties, I'm shocked your appendix broke and it was in there for two years. Didn't you get really sick?

Dr. Nicole Wilke: Absolutely. It is a miracle that I'm here.

Jim Daly: Well, you've heard it, and I think it should have whet your appetite to get a copy of Nicole's book, *Overcoming: What Scripture and Science Say About Resilience*. I think as a parent of two boys, I'm going to dig into this. Even though they're in their 20s now, there are still things we can learn together and to help them become even stronger in that area.

We also have a companion book that Nicole wrote called *Caleb Koala's Comeback Ride*, and that's a children's book in English and Spanish about overcoming adversity. We're going to bundle it with her other book. With a gift of any amount to support Focus on the Family on a monthly basis or a one-time gift, we'll send both of those to you as our way of saying thanks for joining us in ministry.

Let's do this together, help more families. Your support is literally changing lives and we can't do it without you. One of the ways we're meeting people's needs is through our great Christian counseling staff. You can schedule a free conversation by phone, so get in touch with us no matter what your need.

John Fuller: Contact us today, donate as you can and request the book called *Overcoming*, and also *Caleb Koala's Comeback Ride*. We've got this bundle available for you. The details are at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. That's 800-232-6459.

And if you're traveling this summer, we'd love to see you at our welcome center here in Colorado Springs. We've got a great bookstore, a fun play area for kids, and lots of treats and what an experience at Whit's End Soda Shop. It's all here on the Focus on the Family campus. Stop by and create memories together.

Next time, we're going to hear from Dave and Ashley Willis offering tips on ways that you can do marriage better.

Ashley Willis: Coming to your spouse with curiosity and compassion instead of criticism is really key because it changes the words you say to them, but also the way that you come at them with your tone, because tone is really important too.

John Fuller: That's next time on Focus on the Family and remember when you get in touch, let us know how you're listening: on our website, through our mobile app, or on our podcast feed. I'm John Fuller, and on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, join us next time as we help you and your family thrive in Christ.