Children and Stress

Stress can be difficult for adults to handle. But when children are exposed to ongoing stress or the devastating stress like that experienced by children in war torn countries, the effects of stress can have long lasting and life changing effects.  

Having worked  for Head Start, I have witnessed many families that have struggled with stressors like poverty, domestic violence and the incarceration of one parent.   I can remember one particular family that consisted of a single mom and her four children.  The father was in jail for involvement with drugs so she was raising her four young children on her own.  She worked full time.  However, it seemed as though no matter how hard she worked she could never catch a break.  As things would start to get better for this family something would always happen to add more stress to their lives.  This single mom had little family support because the grandmother of the children did not agree with many of the choices her daughter made.  The family relied on public assistance like child care subsidy, housing/rent assistance and medical access to survive.  I can remember doing home visits with this family while they were living in a motel room because they had been evicted from their apartment.  I can remember talking with the mom after an incident of domestic violence that occurred when the father was released from jail and had returned home.  I could see the affect the stress had on the children's behavior.  The children often acted out and tested boundaries.  However, mom was very caring and very involved with her children, her love for them was apparent even in the midst of the chaos in their lives. 

In addition to the affects of ongoing stress on children, it has always concerned me about children growing up in war torn parts of the world like the Middle East.  Living in a relatively peaceful society, I can't imagine the terror and the stress that war places on children and their families.  How do children in these situations cope?  In researching this I found that modern day conflicts often result in more civilian casualties with children often being affected the most.  According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 2 million children have been killed by conflict over the last decade; 6 million children have been made homeless; 12 million have been injured or disabled; and there are at least 300,000 child soldiers operating in 30 different conflicts across the globe.  This does not even take into account the amount of children affected by the loss of parents, family and friends and the number of children that are injured emotionally and developmentally by war.  The United Nations (UNICEF), the Red Cross and many other charitable organizations are trying to bring focus to the terrible effects that war has on children.  However, wars in the Middle East continue and the innocence of children is still part of the collateral damage.

Unfortunately, children are often the ones who are affected most by stress in the family, no matter where that family lives or what the cause of the stress is.  Stress on children also has a long lasting impact.  As a parent of two children, and an early childhood educator, I feel it is my responsibility to help parents find ways to cope with stress and lessen the impact on children.  Unfortunately there is not much I can do to directly help the children in the Middle East, but I can help child care programs in my local community make referrals for families who are coping with stressors like poverty and domestic violence. 

Immunizations: Protecting our children

In the United States, some parents have become very concerned over vaccinating their children.  In Pennsylvania, the Department of Public Welfare requires that preschool children attending regulated child care programs have up to date immunizations.  Kindergarten children are also required to have immunizations prior to entering school.  As a former child care director, I can remember more than one concerned parent who, for whatever reason, did not what their child immunized.  I always found this somewhat ironic because in an effort to protect their child from what they might consider "unnecessary" shots, they were actually putting them at risk of a life threatening disease.  Diseases that immunizations are designed to protect them against.  I recently found information about immunizations in Europe and not was not surprised that many of their immunizations are similar to  the United States.  Like in the United States, immunizations in Europe have dramatically reduced many preventable diseases.  However, they have also seen outbreaks of measles and polio due to an unimmunized population.  As for my children, I have always followed the American Academy of Pediatrics immunization schedule because I can not imagine taking the risk exposing my children to life threatening or life altering diseases that are completely preventable.

References
What Recent Measles and Rubella Outbreaks in Europe Can Teach the U.S. (2012, July 2) Forbes. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gerganakoleva/2012/07/02/what-recent-measles-and-rubella-outbreaks-in-europe-can-teach-the-u-s/

Child Birth and A Miracle called My Daughter

Almost six months after my husband and I married, I became pregnant with our first child. I had just turned 35. My pregnancy was typical for the most part. I suffered from the normal morning sickness for most of the first half of my pregnancy. At 16 weeks, I was given a blood screening which showed that I was at an increased risk of having a child with Downs Syndrome. After having an ultrasound which showed there were none of the typical physical signs of Downs, I decided that I wouldn't undergo any further invasive testing like an amniocentesis. Putting our faith in God that everything would turn out as it was suppose to, my husband and I prepared for the birth of our daughter. We anxiously awaited her birth. My due date came and went as we continued to wait. For almost a week after my due date, I underwent daily ultrasounds and stress tests. All of which showed a healthy baby girl that the doctors estimated to be about 7 lbs 12 oz. The waiting continued. Then the day finally arrived when it was time to induce labor. I arrived at the hospital on Monday morning and the slow induction process began. The next day the nurse injected me with pitocin to move along my labor. Within five minutes of it's injection into my IV, the nurse noticed the baby's heart rate dropped. She immediately gave me another injection to stop the induction. Suddenly the slow waiting turned into world wind as I was informed by the doctor that he needed to do a cesarean section because the baby was showing signs of distress. I was rolled into the operating room, as the Anesthesiologist walked along side of my bed reading the list of possible complications and asking me to sign one form after another. Within a half hour I was on the operating table, prepped and ready. My husband was brought in. He sat beside me holding my hand with a curtain between us and the doctor who was delivering our baby. Having been given a spinal block, I was fully awake and aware of everything that was going on. The nurse told me I would feel some pressure as my daughter was born. I could hear the doctor counting...one, two, three. Then I could hear the first cry of my baby girl. The nurse held her up beside me so I could see her and give her a kiss. Then they carried her away. After I spent a little time in the recovery area of the hospital I was wheeled to my room where my husband, family and friends were waiting with my daughter. She was so tiny...at 5 lbs 10 oz. She was not as big as I had expected. Later, I found out the counting that I heard during delivery was the doctor counting the number of times the umbilical cord was wrapped around my daughter's neck. Wrapped three times around her neck, the cord was stretched so thin that it was only the size of a small pinky finger. Normal cords are the size of a thumb or larger. One of the nurses who came into the room later to check on us said "Your daughter is a miracle", explaining that often when a cord is rapped around a baby's neck that many times the outcome is usually not good. She told us that it can be common for the cord to be wrapped one or even two times, but more than that often ends up in the loss of the baby during birth. She confirmed what I already knew...my daughter was a little miracle. I was so thankful to the doctors and nurses that took wonderful care of both of us.

After the birth of my daughter, I often wondered if I had been pregnant in a different time in history or in a different country what would have happened. Being curious about this and being given this task as part of my current child development class, I looked at the incidents of caesarean section in other countries and found that countries like China and Mexico actually have high rates of C-sections. I also researched a little about child birth in South Africa and found that there has been an increase in the mortality rate of mothers and children during child birth whereas the mortality rate throughout the rest of Africa and the world is actually decreasing. Curious as to why, I found that 50% of the mothers who die during labor are a result of treatable complications like an obstructed birth. I have also read that a mother's access to private or public health care in Africa may result in very different experiences for a pregnant mother. For example, poor pregnant women with HIV in South Africa are often mistreated and physically abused in public hospitals that have little to no oversight or accountability. After my research, I am even more thankful for the prenatal care and the skilled doctors and nurses that assisted me in delivering my baby girl...who today is a bright and happy kindergartener.   

 

Reference

. Christian Nordqvist. "The Shocking Truth About Giving Birth In South Africa." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 8 Aug. 2011. Web.
6 Sep. 2012. < http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232413.php>