Workshop Recap

Breakfast for Babies: Tovah Klein, PhD

By: Joanne Loeb

On 4/4/25, NYZTT and NYS-AIMH held their bi-annual collaborative event, Breakfast for Babies. This year, the guest speaker, Dr Tovah P Klein, presented “Resilient Children in Uncertain Times: What Parents and Children Need Today”. Dr Klein is the Director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology. She is an advisor to programs for children worldwide and an advisor to children’s media. She is also the author of two books, Raising Resilience: How to help our children thrive in times of uncertainty (HarperCollins, 2024) and How Toddlers Thrive: What parents can do today to plant the seeds of lifelong success (Simon & Schuster, 2014).

Dr Klein’s engaging presentation helped us understand the process of developing resilience in young children and parents. She talked about the relationship between resilience and uncertainty saying that resilience helps us face the inevitable uncertainties of life and uncertainty is the “gift” that helps us build resilience. She emphasized that resilience is not a trait or a dose, or the result of tough love, but rather the ability to adapt, adjust and be flexible in the face of uncertainty and stress.

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How do young children develop resilience? Dr. Klein explained that it is through their secure attachments, their relationships with adult caregivers who provide what she calls the “5 Pillars of Resilience: emotional safety, emotion regulation, limits/freedom, connection, and acceptance”. Rather than trying to protect their children from adversity, parents who foster resilience allow their children to face low-level stress and experience uncertainty on the path to developing self-confidence and the ability to manage strong emotions. In the context of secure attachment, parents encourage their children to reflect on their experience and process hard emotions without shame or judgment. 

The challenge for parents in fostering resilience is that their own past histories, expectations and frustrations limit their ability to provide emotional safety for their children. Dr Klein stressed the importance of being “good enough” parents who recognize their own mistakes and missed cues and make efforts to repair and reconnect. Dr Klein ended her workshop with the invitation to participants to join breakout groups to talk about specific challenging situations they had faced as parents and/or practitioners. A few participants shared their parenting experiences caring for children with special needs and described how, over time and with support, they became less reactive and more accepting of their child’s behavior and individuality.