Positive Childhood Experiences: Building the Protective Buffer Your Child Needs in High-Conflict Co-Parenting
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If you are raising a child alongside a high-conflict or coercively controlling co-parent, you have likely spent a lot of energy focused on damage control — trying to minimize exposure to conflict, manage court proceedings, and protect your child's emotional world from chaos you did not create. That instinct matters. But research on child development points to something equally important that is fully within your control: actively building Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs), which serve as a real, measurable buffer against the adversity your child may be exposed to.
In last week's blog, developing a secure parent-child relationship was discussed as one of the most powerful protective factors a child can have in a high-conflict family. That secure relationship — built through consistent attunement, safety, and repair — helps provide the first three PCEs: feeling safe and protected by an adult at home, feeling able to talk to family about feelings, and feeling that family stood by them during hard times. This week's focus is on the other four PCEs, and why intentionally cultivating all seven gives children something ACEs alone cannot take away: an ever-growing set of resources.
What Are Positive Childhood Experiences?
PCEs are foundational, relationship-based experiences in the first 18 years of life that build a child's sense of belonging, connection, and support. They were identified by researchers studying why some children exposed to adversity still went on to thrive, while others with similar exposure did not.[1]
The most widely used framework comes from a 2019 study by Christina Bethell and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, published in JAMA Pediatrics, which surveyed over 6,000 adults about seven specific experiences before age 18:[2][3]
1. Feeling able to talk to family about feelings
2. Feeling that family stood by them during difficult times
3. Feeling safe and protected by an adult in their home
4. Enjoying participation in community traditions
5. Having at least two non-parent adults who took a genuine interest in them
6. Feeling supported by friends
7. Feeling a sense of belonging in high school (or their school community)
In simple terms, PCEs are not about giving children a perfect or conflict-free childhood — no such thing exists, especially during a divorce. They are about ensuring a child has enough consistent connection, safety, and belonging woven through their days that their nervous system and sense of self have something steady to stand on.
The Promotive and Protective Effects: How PCEs Work
Here's what to know: researchers describe PCEs as working in two distinct but overlapping ways.
The promotive effect. PCEs build resilience and drive positive outcomes for every child, regardless of how much adversity they have experienced. Children with low ACE exposure benefit from PCEs, and so do children with high ACE exposure — the relationship between PCEs and positive outcomes holds steady across the board. This matters because it means investing in PCEs is never wasted effort, whether or not your child is currently facing significant conflict.[6][1]
The protective effect. PCEs also buffer or soften the negative influence of ACEs when adversity does occur. Bethell's study found that adults who reported 6 to 7 PCEs had 72 percent lower odds of adult depression or poor mental health compared to adults who reported only 0 to 2 PCEs — and this held true even after accounting for how many ACEs they had experienced. [2] A related national study found that adults with 5 to 6 PCEs had roughly 25 to 35 percent lower risk of poor overall health and psychiatric diagnosis, independent of ACE exposure, and that the protective effect was strongest when the burden of ACEs was smallest.[[8]
In sum, PCEs do double duty: they promote wellbeing on their own, and they change the trajectory of how adversity affects a child down the line.
Why PCEs Are So Hopeful: They Can Always Increase
Here's what makes this research genuinely hopeful for a parent navigating a hard custody or co-parenting situation: ACE scores are fixed. Once an adverse experience has happened, it has happened — the number can never go down. Divorce itself, ongoing high-conflict litigation, or exposure to a coercively controlling parent may already represent one or more ACEs for your child, and that reality cannot be erased.
PCEs work in the opposite direction. A PCE score is not fixed or capped by the past — it can always increase. Every new safe adult relationship, every enjoyed tradition, every moment of felt belonging adds to the total, at any point in a child's life. Researchers behind the HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) framework describe this explicitly: the goal is not to erase adversity but to actively build up the positive side of the ledger, because doing so changes outcomes even when the adversity remains present. One 2019 investigator summarized the practical implication well — children and adults can thrive despite an accumulation of negative childhood experiences, but eliminating adversity alone does not guarantee good outcomes if positive experiences are absent.[9][3][5]
This reframes what protecting your child actually looks like. You cannot always control what happens in the other household, in court, or in a conflict you did not choose. But you can always add another PCE. That is an achievable, daily point of leverage — and it never runs out or becomes too late.
Why This Matters So Much in High-Conflict Divorce
Children navigating a high-conflict divorce or a coercively controlling co-parent are often carrying real adversity: exposure to conflict, inconsistency between households, loyalty binds, and sometimes direct emotional manipulation. Research on PCEs and ACEs together suggests that the antidote is not simply reducing the harm — though that matters too — but deliberately building the positive side alongside it.[1][5]
Because PCEs are dependent not just on the family but also on community, school, and relational context, a parent in a difficult co-parenting dynamic has more available levers than it may feel like in the moment. You do not need the other parent's cooperation to help your child build friendships, feel a sense of belonging at school, connect with a coach or mentor, or participate in a meaningful tradition. These are avenues you can influence directly, even when the co-parenting relationship itself remains difficult or unsafe to negotiate with.
It is also worth noting what the research does not say. Having a high PCE score does not mean adversity did not happen or does not matter, and it is not a substitute for addressing abuse, coercive control, or safety concerns through appropriate legal and clinical channels. PCEs are a buffer and a resilience-builder, not a cure — but a well-documented, meaningful one.
Practical Ways to Help Your Child Access the Other PCEs
Since last week's blog on secure attachment already addressed how a secure parent-child bond builds the first three PCEs (feeling safe at home, able to talk about feelings, and supported through hard times), the focus here is on the remaining four: community traditions, non-parent adult relationships, friendship support, and school belonging.
Enjoying community traditions. Consistency matters more than scale. A weekly pancake breakfast, an annual visit to a favorite park, a holiday ritual that survives the transition to two households — these repeated, predictable touchpoints give children something to anticipate and hold onto regardless of what else is shifting in the family structure.
Cultivating non-parent adult relationships. Actively support your child's connections with grandparents, aunts and uncles, coaches, teachers, faith leaders, or family friends who show consistent, genuine interest in them. In a high-conflict co-parenting situation, these relationships offer a child additional safe adults outside the direct parental conflict — people who can offer stability and attention without being caught in the dispute.
Fostering friendships. Prioritize your child's ability to maintain friendships across custody transitions — consistent school enrollment, extracurricular continuity, and facilitating playdates or hangouts even when logistics are complicated by two households. Peer support becomes an especially important source of stability when the adult relationships around a child feel unpredictable.
Building a sense of school belonging. Stay engaged with your child's school life: know their teachers, attend events when possible, and encourage involvement in clubs, sports, or activities that give them a felt sense of "I belong here." A child who feels connected at school has an anchor that exists independent of what is happening at home.
Across all four, the common thread is consistency and genuine connection rather than intensity or perfection. Research on PCEs emphasizes that these experiences are cumulative — each one adds independently to a child's resilience, so no single relationship or activity has to carry the whole weight.[2][1]
Gentle Encouragement
If you are in the middle of a high-conflict divorce or managing a coercively controlling co-parent, it is easy to feel like you are only ever able to play defense. The research on Positive Childhood Experiences offers something different: an active, buildable path forward that does not depend on the other parent changing, the court resolving things quickly, or the conflict disappearing. Every PCE you help your child access is a real, evidence-backed investment in their long-term resilience — and unlike ACEs, that number can only go up.
If you're navigating a high-conflict co-parenting situation and need support, coaching can help you build practical, personalized strategies for protecting your child's sense of safety and helping them access the positive experiences that build lasting resilience.
References
1. Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board. Positive Childhood Experiences: Research to Practice Brief.https://preventionboard.wi.gov/Documents/Publications/PCE_Research to Practice.pdf
2. Bethell, C., Jones, J., Gombojav, N., Linkenbach, J., & Sege, R. (2019). Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample: Associations Across Adverse Childhood Experiences Levels. JAMA Pediatrics, 173(11), e193007. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2749336
3. National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine. Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6735495/
4. Narayan, A. J., Rivera, L. M., Bernstein, R. E., Harris, W. W., & Lieberman, A. F. (2018). Positive childhood experiences predict less psychopathology and stress in pregnant women with childhood adversity: A pilot study of the Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs) scale. Child Abuse & Neglect, 78, 19–30.
5. Sege, R., & Burstein, D. (2021). Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs). Academy on Violence & Abuse; Sege, R., & Browne, C. H. (2017). Responding to ACEs With HOPE: Health Outcomes From Positive Experiences. Academic Pediatrics, 17(7), S79–S85. https://www.academicpedsjnl.net/article/S1876-2859(17)30107-9/fulltext
6. Doom, J. R., Seok, D., Narayan, A. J., & Fox, K. R. (2021). Adverse and Benevolent Childhood Experiences Predict Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Adversity and Resilience Science, 2(3), 193–204.
7. Lee, H., Boyd, R., Slack, K. S., Mather, R.S., & Murray, R.K. (2020). Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs), and Adult Health. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research.
8. Crandall, A., Miller, J. R., Cheung, A., Novilla, L. K., Glade, R., Novilla, M. L. B., Magnusson, B. M., Leavitt, B. L., Barnes, M. D., & Hanson, C. L. (2019). ACEs and counter-ACEs: How positive and negative childhood experiences influence adult health. Child Abuse & Neglect, 96, 104089.
9. Positive Experience Movement / Center for Child and Human Development. Responding to ACEs with HOPE: Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences. https://positiveexperience.org/research/responding-to-aces-with-hope-healthy-outcomes-from-positive-experiences/