Chapter 6
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Supporting Children in Stressful Situations
Childhood stress involves any unusual demand-something new or different-that forces
children to draw on energy reserves that exceed what they would normally require for
dealing with ordinary events in their lives.
Not all stress is harmful. Sometimes it is exactly what is needed to push us toward
responding successfully to a challenge.
Experts agree that growing up in today’s world is getting tougher. As many as
25% of all children are at risk of academic failure because of physical, emotional,
or social problems and less able to function well in school because they are
hungry, sick, troubled or depressed.
Why be concerned?-There are two reasons to be concerned about childhood stress:
We have become more knowledgeable about the short-term and long-term effects
of stress.
It is believed that a child’s stress-coping responses are learned early in life
through watching how significant others cope under pressure.
The Nature of Stress:
Perception of an event as a stressor is extremely important. It is only when
individuals perceive that a demand is greater than their resources to handle it that
they become “stressed” and experience feelings of being overwhelmed or out of
control.
Childhood is often looked in as a period of life that is less demanding, making it
easy to forget that children can feel overwhelmed with accumulated stress.
Sources of Children’s stress
The Child’s own personality in generating stress like children who do not appear
to be comfortable in any program, no matter how wide the range of offerings.
Family stressors
Birth of a child; death of a pet; breaking of a favorite toy; getting caught stealing
or lying etc.
Separation and divorce
Confusing and disturbing
Pre-divorce family stress can go on for long periods before one or both adults
finally make a decision to end the marriage.
Two myths associated with divorce
1. Relief that a bad marriage has ended.
2. So many getting divorced that the trauma has been reduced.
 Being separated from a parent ranks even higher as a stressor, particularly
before the age of five.
 Some children believe that may have caused their parents’ separation or
divorce by something they did.
 Children’s problems are intensified when parents are unable to
successfully restructure family life following divorce.
 Transition time needed for most families to equilibrate following divorce
is at least two years.
 Children feel hurt and helpless when parents divorce.
 Children go through a grieving process with divorce.
 Denial of the divorce is children’s attempt at trying to control a situation
in which they have no control.
 Anger is understandable
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 Bargaining by children is an attempt to keep their parents from divorce.
 Depression may occur.
 Effects of divorce vary with children’s ages.
Low income families
 One of the greatest sources of stress for children is the lack of family income.
 Almost 12 million children (16%) live in poverty and another 5 million (7%) live
in extreme poverty.
 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, the more income a
family has, the better their children do academically, socially, and physically.
 Children engulfed in poverty are exposed to a variety of adversities: poor health
and dental care, high mobility rates, and lack of material resources in a consumerconscious world that causes them to become ashamed of how they are dressed or
how they live.
 As many as 100,000 children living in these families are homeless.
Blended families
 Today, the average marriage in the U.S. lasts only 7 years. Because 75% remarry
and tend to bring young children into these new unions, 1300 new blended
families are formed every day. Half of all children under the age of 13 currently
live with one biological parent and that parent’s current partner.
 Major stressors that children encounter in a stepfamily have to do with feelings of
insecurity and jealousy that crop up between them and other members of the
newly formed family.
 Stepparents can add pressure to the situation when their expectations of a
stepchild are unrealistic or incompatible with previous expectations.
 Barriers to open communication about natural parents can be highly damaging.
Remarriage also brings with it a myriad of ongoing adjustments for children.
Death as a stressor
 All children older than seven months of age tend to show some distress when
separated from a parent by death; however, the amount of trauma depends on the
child’s age, the child’s understanding of the event, and the child’s psychological
anchoring to the deceased person.
 Before age two, children understand very little about death.
 Children who have first hand encounters may arrive at an understanding of death
beyond what is typical for other children of the same age.
 Stage one (three to six years of age)
o Children in the first stage think of death as temporary and reversible, not
final.
 Stage two (four ten years of age)
o A major advance in children’s thinking occurs in the second stage as they
become increasingly aware that all living things eventually die.
 Stage three (nine years of age and older)
o The third stage represents the realistic notion that death is personal,
universal, inevitable, and final. Those in this stage understand that all
things die, including themselves.
Working parents
 An additional stressor today is the trend toward greater involvement in the
workforce by parents.
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 Today, 62% of mothers with young children are employed outside the home, and
most of them return to work in their child’s first three to five months of age.
Children in abusive or neglectful families
 A family’s ability to nurture the children at any particular time is determined by a
combination of social stress on the family and also the adult’s levels of caretaking
skills.
 In the United States, an estimated 3.3 to 10 million children have been exposed to
domestic violence.
 In multi-problem families, abuse and neglect are major sources of stress for
children.
 There are often concurring endemic problems such as substance abuse, poverty,
lack of social support, emotional problems, a parental history of being mistreated
as a child, and inadequate education.
Children in foster care
 It is estimated that as many as 500,000 children are currently moving in and out of
foster care.
 Foster families are, by definition, temporary, and professionals must recognize
that foster children continually experience loss: loss of family members again and
again; loss of clothing, toys, and personal belongings; and loss of housing,
neighborhoods, and schools.
 Unfortunately, foster children often do not stay in one place long enough to
receive the help they need.
 Caregivers who hold reasonable expectations and focus heavily on teaching
problem solving and building self-esteem will make the greatest strides with these
children.
Extrafamilial stressors
 Child care-High quality developmental child care need not be stressful for
children. Unfortunately, we have not yet developed a universal, consistently good
system of child care in the U.S.
 Poor quality child care contributes enormously to child stress.
When quality of care is assessed, three components are critical:
1. Childcare providers must have training in child development and early
childhood education, with continuing training each year.
2. There should be low child-to-adult ratios and small group sizes.
3. Programs that provide high-quality care for comprehensively on the general
well-being of growing children and their families-educational, nutritional, and
health.
The number of hours that children spend in child care varies dramatically
by ethnicity and income.
Children from the lowest and highest income levels receive a higher
quality of care than do children coming from the middle-income or nearpoverty range.
We continue to be the only highly developed country in the world without
a national child care policy.
Stress in formal school settings
 At least 10% of children entering school are not ready for what awaits them.
 Children are not developmentally ready for what is expected for them
academically.
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 Mismatch between a child’s ability and curricular expectations are blamed on the
child rather than in the system.
 Problem appears to be more serious for boys, than girls.
 Although we need to be as rigorous as possible in guiding children’s skill
building, we also need to be cautious about rushing young children academically.
 Physical and intellectual growth is more uneven in the early years than later.
 The great diversity among young children in terms of chronological, cultural,
primary language, gender, and experiential differences mandates that early
childhood educators must continue efforts to apply developmentally appropriate
practices (DAP) in the classroom.
Health-related assaults
 Asthma now affects 4.8 million children in the United States.
 Chronic illnesses experienced by children include cancer, sickle cell disease,
cystic fibrosis, diabetes, hemophilia, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
 One of the greatest health treats to children today is a lack of exercise and
inadequate nutrition.
 Far more serious are the results of Vulnerable child syndrome (VCS) that we
continue to see from maternal substance use and abuse during pregnancy
including all the problems related to low birth weight, infections, pneumonia,
congenital malformations, and drug withdrawal.
 Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is not the nation’s leading know cause of mental
retardation in children.
 The exposure of these children to prenatal cocaine and problematic family life has
become a significant burden for special education and foster care system.
Natural disasters, war, terrorism, and violence
 Natural disasters- Hurricane Katrina
 War zones/family in the military
 Human-created social traumas-family members causing harm to their own
children.
 Violence on children’s television programming.
Other assaults
 Kinds of food we are feeding them
 The amount of television to which they are exposed
 The usurping of play by adult-directed extracurricular activities.
Children’s reactions to stress
 Physical stress- highly stressed children often look stressed.
1. Slumped posture
2. Appear charged up
3. Appetite increase or decrease
4. May develop problems sleeping
 Psychological reactions-include children are less able to concentrate.
 How children cope with stress
1. Denial-children act as though the stress does not exist.
2. Regression-when children act younger than their years and engage in earlier
behaviors, they are using regression.
3. Withdrawal-children take themselves physically or mentally out of the picture.
4. Impulsive acting out-children act impulsively and often flamboyantly to avoid
thinking either of the past or of the consequence or their current actions.
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 Children’s more serious responses to stress include symptoms like panic,
depression, dread, forgetfulness, and sleep disturbances. More serious symptoms of
emotional distress may include children pulling out their hair, annoying others,
temper tantrums, running away, defying authority, and expressing excessive or
indiscriminate affection toward adults.
What adults can do to help children manage stress?
 For adults to be effective in helping stressed children, the need a combination of
knowledge, appreciation, skill, and self-awareness.
 Caregivers must honestly examine their own biases and belief systems in regard to
each kind of stressor and each kind of child and family.
Pitfalls to avoid
1. Stereotyping of families
2. Skewed and inappropriate responses
3. Dictating “appropriate” responses
4. Making perfunctory diagnosis of a child’s behavior.
5. Looking for a quick fix of a superficial solution
6. Failing to recognize your own limitations
7. Forgetting that parents have other roles that require their time and energy
8. Being inflexible and/or insensitive to the needs of financially troubled parents.
9. Overreacting to negative parents.
Chapter 6
ECE 120
Supporting Children in Stressful Situations