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Stress in a Child s Life

When we get nervous or upset, our bodies react to our feelings by doing various things. Sometimes people get headaches when they feel upset. Other people might get knots or butterflies in their stomach. Sometimes you get a lump in your throat or wobbly knees. Those body signs or body clues are telling you that you are nervous or upset.

This passage, written by 10 + year old Lisa Hild, puts into words some of the things that can happen if you have stress in your life. (Saunders and Remsberg, 1984) When Lisa said those words, she may not have known she was talking about stress or that she was describing side effects of stress but she was. Stress is a major part of all of our lives, including children s lives. Although we may not think of children as being stressed, they can be and it is something that all parents need be able to identify and deal with. Children may feel stress over different events or situations than adults; therefore it is very important to understand what stress is, the signs of stress in children, and ways to help children cope with stress.

Hans Seyle (1982) the pioneer of stress research defines stress as a stimulus event of sufficient severity to produce disequilibrium in the homeostatic physiological systems. Stress is any extra demand made on the body. It is a hormonal surge that enables us to flee or fight. In fact, depending on the perceived danger or stress, our automatic nervous system release hormones causing chemical changes in our bodies. (Saunders and Remsberg) For example, when we are overcome with stress, our heart beats faster, breathing speeds up, and more blood flows to our brains. You get the same reaction whether the stress is positive or negative. Hans Selye calls this response the General Adaptation Syndrome. Indeed, if we don t learn to deal with stress it can develop into headaches, backaches, ulcers, and other ailments. Children live in the same stressful, complicated world and their bodies can have the same biochemical reaction to stress and develop some of the same side effects that stress causes in adults. (Saunders and Remsberg)

Stress can be both positive and negative. Many times when we think about stress, it s hard to imagine how stress can be positive, especially for a child. According to Alice Sterling Honig, author of Stress and Coping in Children , states that not all stresses are harmful. The struggle to learn to walk is a good example of how some stresses can be perceived as challenges that impel a child to strive toward more mature forms of behavior. (Honig, 1985) Even though some children may get anxious or nervous, this stressor is an important step in a child s life. Honig goes on to say that, Stress is difficult to research, partly because of the wide variety of stimuli that are potentially stressful, their differential intensity, duration, and the interactions of different stressors.

There are also some negative stressors that may arise in a child s life. Death of a parent is perhaps the greatest stress a child must cope with. Researchers have reported that loss of a parent creates profound reactions, including: denial, reversal of affect, identification with the parent, an intense attachment to the lost parent, fantasies of the parent s return, idealization of the parent, and a vindictive rage against the world. (Adams-Greenlt & Moynihan, 1983) According to Reducing Stress in Young Children s Lives by Janet McCracken, The age and sex of the child at the time of a parent s death affect the intensity of stress. Research by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science indicates that girls under age 11 who lose their mothers and adolescent boys who lose their fathers are particularly at risk for enduring emotional problems all of their lives. (1984)

Another negative stress that some children have to deal with is separation or divorce of their parents; indeed, these are devastating stress situations for children. According to Honig, Schools have reported higher rates of disrupted learning, erratic attendance, increased tardiness, school dropout, and social misbehaviors among children from divorced families. Walersten and Kelly carried out extensive clinical investigations of 131 children and parents from 60 middle class, mostly white divorcing families in California. Approximately one third of the children continued to experience overt parental discord even 5 years after the divorce. Stress thus can be severe and even terrifying for children not only when parents fight prior to a divorce, but long after the marriage is dissolved.

The final negative stressor I will discuss is an ecological stressor concerning housing and neighborhood. The living environments of some children seriously increase the risk of stress because of increased neighborhood crime; criminal and antisocial role models; and unaesthetic, dreary, or garbage-cluttered streets. (Honig, 1985) Some apartments are very crowded, so that the number of persons per room does not permit the privacy and play space children need. (Zuravin, 1985) In the United States, high household density seems to increase both the extents to which parents hit their children and the number of verbal quarrels. Child rearing stress is greater in high-rise apartment houses. Children s play is often restricted to the apartment interior, since parents fear accidents or crime if children are allowed outside on their own. This can create tensions, aggravate conflict among family members, and decrease neighborliness. (Becker, 1974)

Stress begins to cause problems when there is a lack of ability to deal with it and the surrounding situations. When children don t know any better or don t receive the amount of help needed, they may start trying to avoid stress. According to Helping Children Cope with Stress , by Avis Brenner, there are four broad categories that describe the most typical evasive actions: denial, regression, withdrawal, and impulsive acting out.

Children that use denial act as though the cause of the stress does not exist. Denial serves to alleviate pain and thus can help children preserve their equilibrium. (Brenner, 1984) For example, if a child s parents are getting a divorce, they may not accept the fact that it is happening and be in a state of denial instead of trying to cope with the stress the situation is causing. If the parents don t realize the child is doing this, it could lead to greater problems down the road.

When children act younger than their years and engage in earlier behaviors, they are using regression. According to Brenner, they become dependent and demanding and as a result, they may receive more physical comforting and affection than usual, thus easing the existing stress. This, too, can cause problems later down the road when, for instance, the child is in school and the teacher doesn t approve of this behavior.

Children may also use withdrawal when dealing with stress....

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