Relational wealth: What is it and why does it matter?

Through the summer months we often wonder how best to support our young people. How can we use this unstructured time to build up their life skills and resilience? Should we book summer camps? Should we travel and let them experience different cultures and different climates? Should we leave them at home, allow them to get bored and sit back and watch their creativity emerge?

Of course, our children will benefit from all the above, structured and unstructured time is important as is exposure to different people and places. BUT what really matters for all our children is their relationships with the people who really care about them – their family, their cousins, their uncles, their aunties, their grandparents, their community, close family friends…. these are the people who contribute to their relational wealth.

Relational wealth is a relatively new concept from Dr Bruce Perry, an American Psychiatrist who writes extensively on resilience and trauma. Relational wealth is essentially what it says on the tin, it is being connected to our extended family, knowing our neighbours…fundamentally having close positive relationships with people we can reply on.

This matters because when our children (or ourselves) experience inevitable adversity…. being bullied at school, experiencing a physical injury, managing a difficult transition … their ability to tolerate this adversity is directly related to how connected they feel to the people around them. Dr Perry suggests that this connectedness is driven by two things

1. The basic skills to make and maintain relationships

2. The relational opportunities we are exposed to

In previous generations families lived in multigenerational units, grandparents, parents, and children all living together and providing opportunities for rich social interactions. In the modern world our households are much smaller, I am guessing most of you reading this live with fewer than five other people. If we add this reduction in household numbers to the significant influence of screens, we can all recognise the lost opportunity for connection.

So, this summer, alongside all the other things, make sure you create opportunities for your children to spent time with the people who love them the most. Let them stay with their grandparents, go crabbing with their auntie, be part of the community project. By doing this you are investing in their relational wealth and ultimately increasing their resilience to manage the inevitable ebb and flow of life.

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