preadolescents

Pre-adolescence 9-12 years is a critical developmental period characterized by rapid biological, emotional, cognitive, and social changes that influence future mental health and well-being. Indian pre-adolescents increasingly encounter academic pressure, changing family dynamics, peer challenges, and extensive digital exposure, creating potential risks to emotional adjustment. Resilience, defined as the ability to adapt positively to adversity and recover from challenging experiences, is an important protective factor during this formative stage. This article aims to examine the determinants and dimensions of resilience among Indian pre-adolescents and to propose a culturally relevant, integrated framework for promoting resilience across biological, psychological, social, and digital domains. This article highlights key factors that strengthen resilience, including emotional regulation, self-esteem, self-compassion, problem-solving skills, supportive parenting, positive school environments, healthy peer relationships, and community connectedness. Digital resilience is also emphasized, encompassing safe technology use, digital literacy, responsible online behavior, and adaptive coping with cyberbullying, online risks, and excessive screen exposure. Based on existing evidence and contextual insights, the integrated pre-adolescent resilience model (IPARM) is proposed, integrating biological, psychological, social, and digital dimensions. Resilience promotion strategies are discussed at individual, family, school, community, and healthcare levels, with nurses and other health professionals playing an important role in early identification of vulnerable children, mental health promotion, and implementation of resilience-building interventions. Strengthening resilience during pre-adolescence represents a valuable preventive mental health strategy. A holistic and culturally responsive approach can foster emotional competence, psychological well-being, adaptability, and healthy development, enabling Indian children to navigate contemporary challenges and develop into confident and resilient individuals.

The cultivation of character strengths like gratitude can enhance children’s well-being and prosocial behavior. While school-based interventions exist, there is a lack of rigorously evaluated, gamified tools that explicitly teach gratitude to preadolescent children. This study evaluated the effectiveness of Grati y la Isla de la Gratitud , an educational game to enhance children’s understanding and expression of gratitude. Using a mixed-methods, quasi-experimental design, we worked with 304 children (aged 9–12) from public and private schools. Pre-post and post-only measures demonstrated that the intervention group displayed significantly more complex understandings of gratitude, incorporating more conceptual elements (benefactor, beneficiary, benefit, effort) in their definitions and reporting a greater variety of gratitude expressions (verbal, concrete, connective) compared to the control group. Qualitative analysis of interviews with a subset of 17 participants showed that children successfully identified gratitude elements and expressions within the game’s narratives and transferred them to personalized “gratitude plans” for everyday life. Participants also reported high levels of satisfaction and perceived educational value from the game, although some noted challenges with specific mini-games. The findings indicate that a gamified intervention can improve preadolescents’ conceptual and practical understanding of gratitude, offering a digital tool for character education in school settings.

پرورش نقاط قوت شخصیتی مانند قدردانی می‌تواند بهزیستی و رفتارهای اجتماعی مثبت کودکان را افزایش دهد. اگرچه مداخلات مبتنی بر مدرسه وجود دارند، اما ابزارهای بازی‌محور که به طور دقیق ارزیابی شده و به طور صریح به آموزش قدردانی به کودکان پیش‌نوجوان بپردازند، کمبود دارند. این پژوهش اثربخشی بازی آموزشی Grati y la Isla de la Gratitud را برای ارتقای درک و ابراز قدردانی در کودکان مورد ارزیابی قرار داد. با استفاده از طرح شبه‌آزمایشی و روش‌های ترکیبی، با ۳۰۴ کودک (۹ تا ۱۲ ساله) از مدارس دولتی و غیرانتفاعی همکاری شد. سنجش‌های پیش‌آزمون-پس‌آزمون و فقط پس‌آزمون نشان داد که گروه مداخله درک پیچیده‌تری از قدردانی را نشان دادند و عناصر مفهومی بیشتری (بخشنده، دریافت‌کننده، منفعت، تلاش) را در تعاریف خود گنجاندند و انواع بیشتری از ابراز قدردانی (کلامی، عینی، ارتباطی) را نسبت به گروه کنترل گزارش کردند. تحلیل کیفی مصاحبه با زیرمجموعه‌ای از ۱۷ شرکت‌کننده نشان داد که کودکان به طور موفقیت‌آمیزی عناصر و شیوه‌های ابراز قدردانی را در روایت‌های بازی شناسایی کرده و آن‌ها را به «برنامه‌های قدردانی» شخصی‌شده برای زندگی روزمره منتقل کردند. شرکت‌کنندگان همچنین رضایت بالا و ارزش آموزشی ادراک‌شده‌ای از بازی گزارش کردند، هرچند برخی چالش‌هایی با مینی‌بازی‌های خاص را ذکر کردند. یافته‌ها نشان می‌دهد که یک مداخله بازی‌محور می‌تواند درک مفهومی و عملی کودکان پیش‌نوجوان از قدردانی را بهبود بخشد و ابزاری دیجیتال برای آموزش منش در محیط مدرسه فراهم آورد.