Alberta Family Wellness Initiative
540, 1100 1st Street SE T2G 1B1 Calgary, AB, Canada

A person’s resilience scale is a good predictor of health outcomes, and what gets placed on the scale in early childhood is especially important. Learn more about resilience in AFWI's fun video Brains: Journey to Resilience https://www.albertafamilywellness.org//brains-journey-to-r

Toxic stress occurs when no supportive caregivers are around to buffer a child’s response to repeated negative experiences. Things that cause toxic stress may include abuse, neglect, parental addiction or mental illness, violence in or outside the home, and chaotic environments. Young children whose brain development has been disrupted by toxic stress are at a much higher risk for later physical and mental health problems, including developing a mental illness such as depression, anxiety, or addiction. Click the link below to learn how to prevent toxic stress: https://www.albertafamilywellness.org/what-we-know/stress

More serious events, like a natural disaster or losing a loved one, aren’t good for us. But if supportive caregivers are around to buffer the child’s stress response, these situations won’t do lasting damage to the brain. That’s called "tolerable stress." https://www.albertafamilywellness.org/what-we-know/stress

Did you know not all stress is bad? Small challenges that create positive stresslike meeting new people or starting the first day of schoolare healthy for development because they help prepare young brains and bodies for the larger challenges they will meet in the future. https://www.albertafamilywellness.org/what-we-know/stress

Although genes play a role in how our brains develop, recent science shows how life experiences, in the first years of our lives and at other sensitive periods of development, change the architecture of the developing brainfor better or for worse. https://www.albertafamilywellness.org/wh/brain-architecture