When your child is stressed by everyday demands or unexpected changes, you play a critical role in creating balance and modeling healthy coping.
Stress can be healthy to some degree. It alerts us to danger, lets us know something is wrong, motivates us to get things done, and encourages us to work through challenges. When your child is challenged by something and works through it, they are building their coping muscles. For example, when your child learns to swim or ride a bike, they feel both excited and unsure. If you encourage them to keep at it, they will feel a sense of accomplishment when they are finally swimming across the pool or riding down the driveway on their own.
Children also experience stress when faced with situations beyond their control. Families and children deal with many uncertainties, like divorce, moving, deployment, loss of a job, or an ill family member. When dealing with changes and unknowns, your child needs to feel connected to you. You offer the foundation of security and safety that they require to make sense of their feelings and figure out how to navigate changes and challenges. Simply being with a child during times of stress can help make it more manageable for them.
Stress becomes distress when demands and pressures overwhelm a child’s capacity to cope, and they do not have a parent or familiar adult to turn to. For example, children whose parents physically punish them experience high levels of distress because they are being hurt by the person whom they would naturally turn to for comfort.
Here are some ways to help:
- Know that some stress is okay and helps build coping skills. Don’t take over every time your child gets frustrated or apprehensive.
- Know that all behaviors are forms of communication. With behavior, children show us what they cannot express in words. Watch for symptoms of stress like withdrawal or aggression.
- Maintain routines. Predictability helps a child feel safe and reduces stress.
- Model a calm response to stressful situations by taking a deep breath and keeping your composure.
- Give the child age-appropriate information about situations that are causing family or community stress, and then LISTEN and support problem-solving.
- Allow the child to work through a range of emotions and reassure them that what they feel is okay and manageable.
- Use alternatives to physical punishment. Connect with your child and redirect or correct their behavior by showing them what to do.
- Model healthy eating, exercise, and a balanced life of work and play.
Check out our CHKD parenting resources and remember your pediatrician is your best credible source of information on your child’s health and well-being.
