Resilience among youth growing up in substance-abusing families.

This article presents the Challenge Model, a new clinical paradigm for evaluating the children of alcoholics and other substance-abusing parents. Unlike traditional risk paradigms, the Challenge Model incorporates both the resilience and the vulnerabilities that can result from struggling with hardship early in life. A developmental vocabulary of strengths is provided for pediatricians to use in research, clinical thinking, and treatment and prevention efforts with COAs.