Practitioners working with children are aware of the negative impact of adverse experiences in childhood with enduring ramifications in personal, physical, and relational functioning. Experiences of child abuse and exposure to parental mental illness, substance misuse, incarceration, parental separation and death and family violence add up towards more detrimental consequences for children.
bower(method) locates these experiences in all four of the model’s meta-frames. In the politics meta-frame is the understanding that these events and their consequences make a child relatively less equal in their capacity to function socially and academically compared to a peer of the same age. The space meta-frame locates difficulties in both the inside neurobiological functioning of the child and their relationships while time acknowledges the past experience and their expected ongoing effects. Adverse experiences are also included in the fourth meta-frame of development as impacting physical wellbeing and presentation and attachment difficulties. These experiences are pervasive and long standing.
Can Positive Childhood Experiences be an Antidote?
Recognizing that an overfocus on adversity contributes little to change, researchers have begun to explore protective factors and positive childhood experiences (PCEs) that may promote childhood resilience, healthy development, and counter the damaging effects of adversity. Self-esteem, emotional regulation, and prosocial skills support children to ‘manage stress, foster positive social interactions, and maintain a sense of self-worth’ and positive childhood experiences may equip children to develop resilience and sidestep the theorized biological pathway to poor health and wellbeing. These include being in nurturing, supportive relationships, living, developing, playing, and learning in safe, stable, protective, and equitable environments, having opportunities for constructive social engagement and connectedness, and learning social and emotional competencies.
Obesity and Childhood Experiences
Obesity is one possible consequence of adverse childhood experiences in adults, and it is likely that the same applies to children, exposing them to greater health risks and becoming a target for bullying and exclusion by others. Mellar et al (2025) undertook a study to develop an exploratory PCEs Index with the potential to protect against or mitigate the association between ACEs and unhealthy weight status. Obesity data was gathered at age 8 from 4,895 children, 72% of whom had experienced 3 PCE’s and 23% 5-6. The six PCE’s selected were: parents in a committed relationship, positive mother-child interaction, mother involved in social groups, child engaged in experiences and activities, the home having routines and rules, and the child attending effective early childhood education. Four of the six assessed PCE’s were associated with reduced likelihood of obesity.
What are the Implications of the Study?
This work points to the importance of interventions addressing a range of factors outside the ‘symptomatic’ child in a future time focus. The six PCE’s are all relational, including the parent’s relationship, the pattern of interactions inside the home, and the mother and child’s engagement outside the family. Rather than dwelling on what has happened in the past, these elements are practical directions that may well be useful in addressing other individual and relational consequences of early adversity. It’s a rich area for future research.
Mellar et al. BMC Public Health (2025) 25:8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-20727-y
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