Explainer · Resilience in children
Resilience in children: common, not rare.
Decades of research by Ann S. Masten and colleagues show that children who adapt well despite adversity are not rare or extraordinary. Their resilience comes from everyday systems most children already have.
The basics
What is resilience in child development?
Resilience is the capacity to adapt and do well in life despite experiences of adversity — poverty, war, disaster, loss, or chronic stress. In child development research, it refers to children who achieve positive outcomes despite serious risk to their development.
For a long time, researchers looked for rare traits that made such children “invulnerable.” Masten’s review of decades of evidence, published as “Ordinary magic” in American Psychologist (2001), reached the opposite conclusion: resilience “is common and it usually arises from the normative functions of human adaptational systems.”
Source: Masten, A. S. (2001). doi:10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.227. Page updated November 4, 2026.
The framework
Ordinary magic: no extraordinary resources required.
Masten calls resilience “ordinary magic” because the systems that protect children are ordinary: caregiving, relationships, schools, communities, and the child’s own developing skills. As she wrote for teachers in 2009, resilience “does not require extraordinary resources in most cases, but instead is the result of what most children have in their lives every day.”
This reframes the question. Instead of asking what makes a few children special, the field asks: what basic systems are missing or damaged when children struggle, and how can they be restored or protected?
The short list
Protective factors that build resilience.
In “Resilience in children: Developmental perspectives” (Masten & Barnes, 2018), the field’s findings are condensed into a “short list” of twelve common resilience factors:
- Caring family, sensitive caregiving
- Close relationships, emotional security, belonging
- Skilled parenting
- Agency, motivation to adapt
- Problem-solving skills, planning, executive function
- Self-regulation skills, emotion regulation
- Self-efficacy, positive view of the self or identity
- Hope, faith, optimism
- Meaning-making, belief life has meaning
- Routines and rituals
- Engagement in a well-functioning school
- Connections with well-functioning communities
Researchers separate promotive factors, which go with better outcomes at any level of risk, from protective factors, which matter most when adversity is high. Many items do both. Not every factor matters at every age: an infant depends on the quality of caregiving, while a teenager can draw on self-regulation, identity, and community connections.
Source: Masten, A. S., & Barnes, A. J. (2018). doi:10.3390/children5070098 (open access, CC BY 4.0). See the full table on resilience factors.
In practice
Examples of resilience in children.
Because resilience comes from ordinary systems, it can be supported. Examples from the research tradition Masten summarizes include: children who do well after homelessness or displacement because a caring adult stayed connected to them; students who thrive in a well-functioning school despite family poverty; and children in war or disaster settings whose recovery is anchored by caregivers, routines, and community support.
The practical implication is hopeful: since the sources of resilience are ordinary, societies can invest in them — parenting support, good schools, safe communities, and mental health care — and expect ordinary magic in return.
Keep reading
How to learn more.
- Ordinary magic — the 2001 paper explained
- Resilience factors — the twelve-factor short list in full
- Books by Ann S. Masten
- Scholar profile — her University of Minnesota research, honors and citations
- Research atlas — key papers and open-access links
- Videos — talks and lectures on resilience in children