Stressed Kids
Is your child feeling overwhelmed and stressed? Do you wonder how to help stressed kids cope and deal more effectively with stress? You are not alone. Children, like adults experience stress. They meet stress at school as they work to learn and succeed academically. Family problems like divorce, addiction or parental conflict can cause stress in children.
Many children, like their parents, feel pressured and rushed. They hurry to get dressed in the morning, to eat breakfast and arrive at daycare or school on time. They may feel pressured and stressed by the social, academic and behavioral challenges at school.
When the school day ends, children rush home to complete homework, take lessons, attend extra curricular activities, eat dinner and prepare for the next day. Many stressed kids must also deal with family stress, from stressed and upset parents to family conflict and problems.
How Do Children Benefit from Help to Manage Stress?
Children who cope well with stress do better in life than children who rely on maladaptive coping behaviors. Teaching children how to manage stress helps to inoculate them against negative stress effects.
Moreover, the behaviors or traits that resilient or psychologically competent children exhibit, reflect positive coping skills or sound stress management techniques. Resilient children are high risk children who do well despite difficult circumstances during their early years. Among other characteristics, resilient children possess good problem solving or coping skills. Positive coping skills comprise the foundation of sound stress management programs for adults and children.
Children who possess positive coping strategies not only cope better with stress, but they are less likely to succumb to its negative effects.
Help for Stressed Kids
Use the strategies outlined below to help you reduce stress in children and teach them positive coping behaviors.
1. Preventative Techniques: Focus on the child's physical well being: for example, good nutrition and enough sleep. Provide opportunities for the child to talk to a caring adult and share his/her feelings. Children who express their feelings in a healthy way cope better with stress.
Let the child know you care through praise, love and attention. Provide children with time to relax and just be. Reduce busy schedules and stressful situations. Stressed kids benefit from physical exercise and time to play and unwind.
2. Symptom Reduction: When children confront stressful situations teach them how to reduce stress symptoms: for example, how to relax and calm down through deep breathing techniques and stretching. Help the child move from a highly emotional state to a more rational one: encourage them to take a brief time out to think the issue through and apply their coping skills.
3. Teach Children Problem Solving Techniques: Children who know how to solve problems cope better with stress.
4. Reduce Stress at Home: Address family problems. Family stress contributes to stress in children. Stressed kids who are experiencing family problems like family conflict and parental addiction need support and help to develop adaptive coping strategies. Create a calm, relaxed environment, with consistent and regular routines and supportive caring family interactions. Have fun as a family. Take time to laugh and enjoy being together.
5. Teach Children Adaptive Coping Strategies: Teach children how to handle the everyday stress of their lives: for example, relaxation techniques, positive self talk and problem solving skills. Visualization or role play techniques can also help prepare the child for stressful situations (e.g. a visit to the doctor or dentist).
6. Be a Good Role Model: Model healthy coping strategies. Take care of yourself and make sure you are handling stress appropriately. If you are experiencing high levels of stress get support to help you cope with the challenges and stress of your own life.
Don't forget, unless we support stressed kids and teach them healthy coping behaviors they are at risk of developing child problems.
If you are worried about stressed kids, or high levels of stress in a child, contact a child psychologist. A psychologist can help determine how well a child is coping, and to what extent stress is contributing to child problems.
Dr. O'Connor, a Toronto psychologist, offers psychological assessments to help "get to the root" of the child problem, including an understanding of the stressors that are contributing and maintaining it. The psychological assessment also leads to evidence based solutions to help reduce these negative stressors, and promote positive outcomes in the child.