by Adam Grushcow

How do we measure vulnerability?

The early experiences of children help pave the way for their long-term development in adolescence and into adulthood, profoundly affecting their physical and mental well-being. The Human Early Learning Program (HELP) has developed a tool that helps us analyse statistical trends across BC, known as the Early Development Instrument (EDI).Through this tool we can make sense of patterns and trends that contribute to vulnerability rates in children, by comparing neighbourhoods and city level scopes to one another over multiple reporting periods. This data is broken into scales and subscales, where scales provide us with an overview, subscales help us better understand what specific factors are contributing to scale level vulnerabilities in children across the province (HELP, 2020).

There are five relevant scales that the EDI scale analyzes. These include physical health & well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development and communication skills & general knowledge. For the sake of this review, we will be focusing on the development of emotional maturity and its subscales in the West Point Grey community.

Understanding emotional maturity

HELP identifies four relevant subscales that comprise emotional maturity. These include:

  • Aggressive behaviour: Do children handle conflict through aggressive behaviour, or do they resolve it through more socially acceptable means?
  • Anxious and fearful behaviour: Do children display anxious behaviours or do they act comfortably with caregivers when separated from their parents?
  • Hyperactive and inattentive behaviours: Do children act reactively or do they think through their actions? Do they struggle at paying attention in the classroom?
  • Prosocial behaviour: Are children more likely to ignore others or are they likely to help them when they are struggling?

Each of these subscales contribute to the overall vulnerability of a group. HELP allows us to identify concerning trends within communities across BC, so that vulnerable groups can be identified and supported to limit the future challenges that they are at greater risk of experiencing when compared to less vulnerable groups (HELP, 2020).

Nature vs nurture: The role risk factors play

Studies of neurodevelopmental programming in youth have provided us with a clearer view of how nature and nurture influence child development. This foundation is set far before children enter the education system as epigenetics, which studies the impact that environmental factors can have on the reprogramming of the brain (Bale, 2015), occurs prenatally and can have a profound effect on how children perceive the world and how these experiences shape their development. A negative prenatal experience for example, may preclude cognitive or behavioural deficits (Berk, 2021). These deficits may be expressed through children acting out aggressively, anti-social behaviours, and cognitive disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Additional risk factors affecting development include diet, shelter, lack of access to extracurricular activities, negative parental and household environments and neighbourhoods with high crime rates and poor infrastructure. Considering these factors one of the most vulnerable groups are children born into poverty who are disproportionately affected by stress early in life. They are more likely to experience high levels of maternal stress in utero, have low birth weights, and experience more neighbourhood and family violence and household chaos; in addition, they are less likely to be cared for by a nurturing adult, and their caregivers are more likely to have a psychiatric problem, compared to their counterparts who are not raised in poverty (Conradt, 2017).

The role it plays in resilience

At the core of resilience is an individual’s capacity to appropriately manage and adapt to changes in environment and challenges. Traub and Boynton-Jarrett outline five modifiable resilience factors which include:

  1. Positive appraisal styles and self-efficacy
  2. Parenting
  3. Maternal mental health
  4. Self-care skills
  5. Household routines and trauma understanding (Masten & Barnes, 2018)

Generally speaking early childhood is a sensitive period, in these periods during a child’s development they may be more prone to stressors, which can significantly alter their emotional maturity. However, the difference in resilience across individuals results in some children developing without the same issues as others who may face seriously damaging consequences. While adverse life events early in development can lead to short and long-term issues, it also has the opportunity to promote resilience if these life events are managed appropriately by caregivers and support networks.

As we consider the variance across children and how they handle adversity, intervention and the teaching of positive coping skills is key in setting a foundation where children are better adjusted to adapt to future challenges. Intervention is a key protective layer that can turn potentially damaging experiences into building blocks for resilient children. By reducing or mitigating risk, reducing barriers, nurturing and providing support, especially among at-risk youth, we are able to generate capacity for resilience over the life course (OECD, 2018).

How does West Point Grey stack up?

West Point Grey, when compared to the rest of Vancouver has a vulnerability rate of 11%, which is 6% below the city’s average of 17%. However, it has seen a meaningful increase in both the short and long-term in terms of vulnerability. At the subscale level West Point Grey has seen negative long-term increases in aggressive, hyperactive/inattentive and prosocial and helping behaviours, while seeing no meaningful long-term changes in anxious and fearful behaviours (HELP, 2020).

The community has also seen a steady rise in individuals whose primary language is something other than English and we have seen this trend emerge despite these numbers decreasing across Vancouver as a whole during the same time period (HELP, 2020). The upward trend of this group creates a set of risk factors to children, including poor academic performance, family makeup and the social support present in the community. These risk factors also set the basis for the development of resilience in children since it involves the interaction between individuals and their social and institutional environments (Preston, et al., 2021). When the correct combination of these factors are present, immigrant children are positioned to respond resiliently to the challenges they face that higher SES youth are less likely to experience during their upbringing.

How can team sports help youth reach their potential?

Sports based intervention programs present vulnerable youth with an opportunity to

develop both physically and mentally, often presenting youth with additional structure and support systems that they may lack due to their vulnerable backgrounds. These sorts of programs present themselves in the form of organised physical activities (Contreras-Osorio et al., 2021) and are relevant from middle-childhood to adolescence and beyond. When implemented correctly, the environment team sports create can positively influence children’s emotional maturity and promote positive development in youth that struggle with aggression, anxious and fearful behaviour and attentiveness, much of which is on the rise in West Point Grey and other neighbourhoods across BC (Contreras-Osorio et al., 2021).

A focus of this review was placed on organised team sports due to their inclusive nature and the additional structure that they provide youth with compared to unstructured play or activities that do not require collaboration. Due to the competitive nature of organised sports, children are faced with new challenges in a recreational and less structured setting (Moreau et al., 2018), testing their resilience and work ethic. Organised team sports as a result create opportunities for children to become more independent and develop initiative, developing intrinsic motivation as they work to achieve a valued goal  (Felfe et al., 2016). These new challenges force children to learn to adapt to stress and deal with criticism and conflict constructively, testing their individual resiliency at a young age.

When a positive environment is created, organized team sports provide vulnerable youth with valuable interpersonal skills and additional support through coaches and role models that can further guide their development (Felfe et al., 2016) and support their mental and physical development. Through this growth, we can promote emotional maturity in youth as studies have shown children that take part in organized team sports show statistically significant positive development in various behavioural metrics. (Felfe et al., 2016). Further to this point, when evaluating city based children, those that perform in sports clubs see improvement through the reduction of peer problems, emotional problems and hyperactivity (Felfe et al., 2016, p. 15), supporting this approach for the children of West Point Grey. As West Point Grey sees a rise in immigrant families where the family’s primary language is not English, organized sports can act as a bridge to forming social bonds where children are able to harness their interpersonal skills such as empathy, loyalty, intimacy, self-control and team spirit (Felfe et al., 2016), increasing their chances of having a more comfortable experience adjusting to life in a new culture, while allowing a child’s support network to become more involved in their communities. 

For vulnerable children, a lack of full attention at home and a challenging environment may hinder their development. Sports participation when it occurs  in settings where young people are physically safe, personally valued, morally and economically supported, personally and politically empowered and hopeful about the future (Haudenhuyse et al., 2013, p. 4). When these pillars are in place the potential risks associated with being unsupervised will be limited, creating a safer path to positive development in middle-childhood.

References

Bale, T. Epigenetic and transgenerational reprogramming of brain development. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 332–344 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3818

Berk, Laura E. (2021). Infants and Children: Prenatal through Middle Childhood (9th ed.), Pearson

Contreras-Osorio, F., Campos-Jara, C., Martínez-Salazar, C., Chirosa-Ríos, L., & Martínez-García, D. (2021). Effects of Sport-Based Interventions on Children’s Executive Function: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Brain sciences, 11(6), 755. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11060755

Conradt, E. (2017). Using principles of behavioral epigenetics to advance research on early‐life stress. Child development perspectives, 11(2), 107-112. https://doi-org.ezproxy.capilanou.ca/10.1111/cdep.12219

Felfe, C., Lechner, M., & Steinmayr, A. (2016). Sports and child Development. PloS one, 11(5), e0151729. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151729

Human Early Learning Partnership. (2019, November). Early Development Instrument British Columbia, 2016-2019 Wave 7 provincial report (Rep.). Retrieved October 1, 2021, from Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, School of Population and Public Health website: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/edibc_wave7_2019_provincialreport.pdf

Masten, A., & Barnes, A. (2018). Resilience in Children: Developmental Perspectives. Children, 5(7), 98. https://doi.org/10.3390/children5070098

OECD (2018), The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background: Factors that Shape Well-being, OECD Reviews of Migrant Education, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264292093-en.

Preston, V., Shields, J. & Akbar, M. Migration and Resilience in Urban Canada: Why Social Resilience, Why Now?. Int. Migration & Integration (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-021-00893-3