News

Seen in their true light, children's vulnerabilities may also be the source of their strength and hope, a new study says. Those children who are unusually sensitive to stress - the orchid children, the Swedes call them - are more likely than their hardier peers ("dandelion children") to suffer in poor soil. But let them grow in nurturing soil and they are more likely to become flowers of striking beauty.

The question is what to do to nurture these sensitive children. Protect them from stress? If so, which stresses? Institutional child care? Sports teams? Do they benefit from big classes in which they are anonymous, or small classes where they don't slip through the cracks? It may be damaging to try to place these children in a cocoon. It is easy to move from nurturance to babying or overprotecting.

In truth, the study made no case for nurturing at all. In looking at 338 kindergarten pupils in the San Francisco Bay Area, it merely compared children who experience high stress levels (as measured by the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva) against children who do not, in homes with high levels of adversity (financial problems, marital strife, harsh parenting styles) and homes without such adversity. A lack of adversity does not imply the presence of nurturing, notes the author, Thomas Boyce, a pediatric researcher at the University of British Columbia, whose study was published in the journal Child Development.

Perhaps the only conclusion that can be drawn is that adversity in the home puts sensitive children at a greater disadvantage than other children, and that sensitive children, in homes without adversity, are usually in an advantageous position, at least in kindergarten. The study did not follow those children, so it seems a stretch to draw conclusions about how long the orchids bloomed.

Still, the study feels profound in suggesting that children who experience the world as stressful need not be unhappy or fearful. Genetics do not determine their life course. They could be headed for a good life, and perhaps a life of great accomplishment. It is the age-old story of the artist.

This age is not kind to this type of child. Today's high-pressure, overprogrammed childhood has been likened to a performance. (It used to be enough, to qualify for university in this country, to send in one's marks. Now it helps to show proof of a prodigal teenagehood.) Parents find it hard to relax and let the orchid children be themselves. An orchid will not be turned into a dandelion, and even if it were possible, consider what would be lost.

To seize on the notion of "orchid children" as another reason to try to perfect the world for every child, rather than letting them take their lumps, to some extent, would be the wrong conclusion. The most responsible conclusion is that the stress they feel at home damages them when they are young, and sets them up for failure. That, and to know your child.