DCRC Blog

This month, we’re celebrating a special milestone: 30 years of supporting young children, educators, families, and communities. To mark our 30th birthday, we’ve created The Resilience Journey: 30 Lessons for Social-Emotional Health as a gift for you.

Resilience isn’t something we’re born with. It’s a skill we build through everyday choices, experiences, and relationships. Over the next three weeks, we hope you’ll explore these 30 lessons designed to strengthen resilience, increase self-awareness, support social and emotional well-being, and encourage personal growth.

Along the way, you’ll reflect on topics such as managing emotions, practicing self-compassion, setting healthy boundaries, navigating change, building relationships, and embracing progress over perfection. Each lesson includes a simple reflection and action step to help you apply what you learn.

As you move through the journey, remember that growth happens one choice at a time, and every small step forward matters.

Whether you explore all 30 lessons, save them for later, or return to specific topics when you need them most, we hope this collection serves as a source of encouragement and inspiration.

For 30 years, the Devereux Center for Resilient Children has helped strengthen resilience and social-emotional development in young children, impacting millions of lives worldwide.

For many of us, when we hear the word “soundtrack,” we think about music. While I hope you have a summer playlist that captures the spirit of the sunny season, there is a different kind of soundtrack – the voice in our head that we listen to on repeat – that can significantly impact our happiness, concentration and overall quality of life.

Aggression in young children can be one of the most challenging behaviors for educators and caregivers to navigate. Whether it’s hitting, biting, throwing objects, or name-calling, these moments can feel overwhelming, but they’re also opportunities for teaching and growth. The key is understanding that aggression is not always intentional, and often, it’s developmentally expected.

At its core, the DECA Program focuses on three within-child protective factors: initiative, self-regulation, and attachment/relationships. Rather than centering on what is “wrong,” the DECA highlights what is going well so that adults can intentionally build on children’s strengths in daily interactions and planning.

Across early childhood classrooms, educators everywhere are asking the same question: How can we better address challenging behaviors? The need for support has grown dramatically in recent years. Teachers report rising numbers of children struggling with emotional and behavioral challenges, both externalizing behaviors like tantrums or aggression, and internalizing behaviors like withdrawal or anxiety. While there’s no single “magic fix,” there is a different way to think about these challenges, one that begins by looking inward.

Every day in the preschool classroom is filled with opportunities for children to take initiative – to explore, make choices, and express their own ideas. When teachers and caregivers intentionally nurture this sense of curiosity and ownership, children feel empowered to try new things and take pride in their growing independence.

In early childhood programs, resilience is often talked about for children, but it begins with the adults who lead the work every day. When leaders are intentional about how they relate to staff, what they believe about their teams, and how they respond to stress, they shape the conditions for everyone’s resilience.

Biting is one of the most challenging behaviors early childhood professionals and families encounter, yet it is also a common and often typical part of development for many toddlers and 2-year-olds. As children mature and build self-regulation skills, most move past biting, especially when adults respond with calm, consistency, and a clear plan.

Emotions are big, powerful and, especially for young children, sometimes overwhelming. Helping children understand what they’re feeling and how to express those feelings safely is one of the most meaningful gifts you can give them. It’s how they learn to manage frustration, show empathy, and build healthy relationships.

Here are some thoughtful ways you can nurture emotional awareness and regulation in classrooms, caregiving spaces, and at home.