But what about the grown-ups?

While resilience is an essential skill for healthy childhood development, science shows that adults also can take steps to boost resilience in middle age, which is often the time we need it most.

Midlife can bring all kinds of stressors, including divorce, the death of a parent, career setbacks and retirement worries, yet many of us don't build the coping skills we need to meet these challenges.

The good news is that some of the qualities of middle age — a better ability to regulate emotions, perspective gained from life experiences and concern for future generations — may give older people an advantage over the young when it comes to developing resilience, said Adam Grant, a management and psychology professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"There is a naturally learnable set of behaviours that contribute to resilience," said Dr Grant, who, with Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, wrote the book "Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy."

"Those are the behaviours that we gravitate to more and more as we age."

Scientists who study stress and resilience say it's important to think of resilience as an emotional muscle that can be strengthened at any time.

While it's useful to build up resilience before a big or small crisis hits, there still are active steps you can take during and after a crisis to speed your emotional recovery.

Last year Dr Dennis Charney, a resilience researcher and dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, was leaving a deli when he was shot by a disgruntled former employee.

Dr Charney spent five days in intensive care and faced a challenging recovery.

"After 25 years of studying resilience, I had to be resilient myself," said Dr Charney, co-author of the book "Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges."

"It's good to be prepared for it, but it's not too late once you've been traumatized to build the capability to move forward in a resilient way."

Here are some of the ways you can build your resilience in middle age.

Practice Optimism

Optimism is part genetic, part learned. So if you were born into a family of Eeyores, you can still find your inner Tigger.

Optimism doesn't mean ignoring the reality of a dire situation.

After a job loss, for instance, many people may feel defeated and think, "I'll never recover from this."

An optimist would acknowledge the challenge in a more hopeful way, saying, "This is going to be difficult, but it's a chance to rethink my life goals and find work that truly makes me happy."

While it sounds trivial, thinking positive thoughts and surrounding yourself with positive people really does help. Dr Steven Southwick, a psychiatry professor at Yale Medical School and Dr Charney's co-author, notes that optimism, like pessimism, can be infectious.

His advice: "Hang out with optimistic people."

Rewrite Your Story

When Dr Charney was recovering from the shooting, he knew that his life was forever changed, but he reframed the situation, focusing on the opportunity the setback presented.

"Once you are a trauma victim it stays with you," he said.

"But I knew I could be a role model. I have thousands of students watching my recovery. This gives me a chance to utilize what I've learned." Continue reading

• Image: Flickr

I'd been summoned to an editor's office at the Globe Magazine with the old "We have a story we think you'd be perfect for." This is how editors talk when they're about to con you into doing something you don't want to do.

Here was the pitch: We want you to write about how middle-aged men have no friends.

Excuse me? I have plenty of friends. Are you calling me a loser? You are.

The editor told me there was all sorts of evidence out there about how men, as they age, let their close friendships lapse, and that that fact can cause all sorts of problems and have a terrible impact on their health.

I told the editor I'd think about it. This is how reporters talk when they're trying to get out of something they don't want to do.

As I walked back to my desk in the newsroom — a distance of maybe 100 yards — I quickly took stock of my life to try to prove to myself that I was not, in fact, perfect for this story.

First of all, there was my buddy Mark. We went to high school together, and I still talk to him all the time, and we hang out all the . . . Wait, how often do we actually hang out? Maybe four or five times a year?

And then there was my other best friend from high school, Rory, and . . . I genuinely could not remember the last time I'd seen him. Had it already been a year? Entirely possible.

There were all those other good friends who feel as if they're still in my lives because we keep tabs on one another via social media, but as I ran down the list of those I'd consider real, true, lifelong friends, I realized that it had been years since I'd seen many of them, even decades for a few. Continue reading

• Billy Baker is a feature writer for the Boston Globe's metro section.