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.