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Stress in children: can we help?

By: Zohra Liaquat Ali

Stress in adults is well acknowledged, but it is easy to ignore its existence in children especially their ordinary appearance and mundane form, in the long run it can create serious health concerns. The purpose of writing this essay is to create awareness for this issue because it can develop psychiatric illnesses, trigger the onset of physical diseases, compound the treatment complexity or prolong the treatment duration. This essay covers the stress related aspects of mainly school-aged children from 3 to 13 years of age. It is very important to recognize these reasons to minimize the stress level in them. There are multiple factors, which enhance stress in children, which includes school issues, societal pressure and effect of poverty, which may impact badly on child’s personality. It is concluded that stress is equally present in children too. Therefore, caring attitude of adults is very important for children. Adults can help them to deal with such situations and to live a healthy life.

Kaplan (2000) stated that, “Although adults commonly think of childhood as a time free of pressures and trouble but in reality children are not strangers to a spectrum of stress, ranging from ordinary to sever”. Stress and anxiety in teenagers are just as prevalent as in adults. It is estimated that about 35% of all children in America experience stress related problem (Kaplan, 2000). Stress level from mild to moderate can help children to cope with routine matters. As suggested by Lau (2002), “Psychologist believes that stress experience by children may actually play an important role in the development of various types of health and adjustment problems extending well into adulthood”. On the other hand, for some, childhood may be extremely stressful events that would severely tax the coping and adaptive abilities of even the most resilient child. It can develop psychiatric disorder, trigger the onset of physical disease, complexity and prolong the treatment duration. Therefore, children are the most vulnerable population. Sources of stress in childhood include: school issues, societal pressure and effect of poverty, which may impact badly on child’s personality.

School as a formalized world of learning may also introduce different set of rules and regulations. Problems could arise when children are not prepared for school environment and eventually suffer bitter tasted of failure. Perhaps the most common source of school–age stress is test performance anxiety. Test anxiety effect 10% to 30% of children performance in school (Kaplan, 2000). High level of evaluation anxiety ensure when child’s performance and achievement is not up to the expectation of parents. Generally, parent’s expectations are too high as a way of encouragement and tend to be less positive at first. This makes the child develop negative feelings and hostile views of the rejecting parents. Another response of stress at school is poor peer relationship. Not all the children make friends easily, which result in loneliness and may lead to serious adjustment problems in childhood and later in life. Perceiving one self as being not smart or below average could be a source of stress, especially in overly competitive school settings (Lau, 2002). A child may seem different thus may become a target of ridicule and taunts, which further increase child stress.

In addition to this, norms of a society could play a vital and disgusting role in producing too much stress in children. According to Lau (2002), “over a significant span of human history, more often children have been the victim of the “slings and arrows” of an uncaring society then the recipients of its beneficent protection”. Today, children do have special set of pressure like families now move more then in the past. So children are more prone to change a schools and friends. Present economic conditions are such that the parents have to work and are not emotionally available for their children or lack positive coping mechanisms themselves. This often spurs stress in their children. Besides this, breakdown of extended family system has created large number of latchkey (or self care). Children miss out the opportunity to learn from and communicate with a verity of adult support systems in handling minor situations. So, lack of coping capacity may further prone to high level of stresses among children.

Furthermore, Pakistan comes under the developing world; therefore, a huge population is suffering from poverty. Poverty itself brings multiple problems including criminals’ involvement, eviction from homes, early burdensome responsibilities, substandard and over crowded housing. Besides this, parents who are experiencing these situation are seem to be more depressed and irritable can directly transfer their feeling to their children. Moreover, children with low socioeconomic background are often exposed to violent and abusive behavior from adults in families and could lead to early drop out from school. Additionally, due to poverty they may suffer nutritional deficiencies and can end up with any medical problem that again creates further stresses in children.

In conclusion, stress is equally present in children too. To minimize stress we need to identify its factors, which are mainly school issues, societal pressure and effect of poverty on child psychology. Therefore, caring attitude of adults is very important for children. Provide an environment to them that promotes a relaxed lifestyle. According to (Lau 2002) “by nature children tend to apply their coping techniques only to the situation in which they were developed.” In this regards adults can show ways to tackle the difficult situation, the youngsters learn from this and use their skills to handle their problems effectively. Under controlled environment, children can be made to handle stressful situation slowly and gradually, while at the same time shown how to cope with the problems. In my recommendation parent should play an important role to safeguard their children from stress related diseases. They should spend more time and have healthy discussions with children, because children try to seek parent’s time rather than their money. Time spend with children pays in the long run.