Helping Children Cope with Stress

Resilience:
> Resilience is a set of qualities enabling a child to adapt successfully in spite of risk & adversity
> Protective Factors that Foster Resilience:
~ A caring relationship
~ High expectations
~ Opportunities for participation

Stress in Childhood:

Acute-intense stress, occurs suddenly e.g. trip to the emergency room. Stress can be physical or psychological or both

Chronic-persistent stress, comes into a person’s life and remains for a long time (possibly forever)
e.g. effects of abuse, poverty, illness

Sources of Stress:

Internal: come from within the child; i.e. hunger pangs in a neglected infant.

External: originate outside the child; i.e. moving

Children experience stress when they cannot cope effectively with some internal or external demand.

How stress affects children:
Physical Effects pg. 178
Behavioural and Psychological Effects pg.179
SEE FIGURE 7.1

Stages in Responding to Stress:
~ Alarm-child stops what s/he is doing and focuses on the event for the 1st time
~ Appraisal-this complex stage involves reviewing past events and trying to cope
~ Searching for a coping strategy-the child has a better chance at coping if they believe
they can control or master the event

Coping Effectively with Stressors:
Coping is looking for something inside or outside yourself to come to terms with stressors.

There are different ways of coping with stressors:
~ Get information
~ Take direct action
~ Restrain movements or actions
~ Deny or avoid the problem

To Cope Well:
~ Children’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development affects whether they
have what it takes to cope or whether they need adult guidance to cope
~ They must be able to think about more than one thing at a time
~ Invent alternative ways of solving a problem
~ Manage unpleasant emotions
~ Understand how their reactions affect situations
~ Think purposefully

General Guidelines for Helping Children Cope with Stress:
~ Model good stress management
~ Manage a classroom so that it is a low stress environment
~ Acknowledge & learn about the variety of stressors in children’s lives
~ Act as a buffer between a child and a stressor
~ Teach children calming & relaxing skills
~ Learn & teach good coping skills