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Home › Articles › Kid Connections › A Little Stressed

A Little Stressed

Does Family Stress Affect Toddlers?

By Keath Castelloe Low

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This was also the time period when Hurricane Katrina hit. "While it did not directly affect our town, there was a lot of sadness and fear in the air, and my husband's job required him to work longer than usual hours helping out at shelters," Sarah says.

Counseling sessions, lots of love and attention at home and lots and lots of patience helped her son get through this difficult time.

Consistency and Predictability

Suzanne Schryver from Merrimack, N.H., helped her toddler and two preschoolers during a divorce and two moves by trying to keep everything else predictable and routine in her children's lives. Interestingly, her youngest child developed a wonderful strategy for helping himself when feeling stressed.

"My youngest, who turned 2 before the first move, would ask to go into the crib when he was feeling unsettled," Schryver says. "I realized that the crib was the only physical environment that had remained constant for him."

When the second move into a more permanent home occurred, Schryver kept the crib for her son even though he was old enough to move to a bed. The crib remained in the room until her son had adjusted to the other changes and losses and "he was ready to say goodbye to it," she says.

* Last name withheld to protect privacy.

Helping Your Child

Dr. Barzvi offers the following suggestions for helping your child through stressful periods:

1. First, it is important for parents to recognize when their child is stressed. Many parents miss it. One tip is to look for any changes in their behavior or mood. Kids who are stressed can appear shy, aggressive or depressed. One sign of stress is a when a child suddenly begins to have less interest in her normal activities and gets less pleasure from things that she used to enjoy.

2. Talk to your child and ask open-ended questions. Never brush off something as "no big deal." To your child, his feelings are important. Be empathetic to how he feels ("I can imagine that that really upset you"), and then try to help your child by teaching him how to solve a problem ("What do you think would be a good way to solve this problem?").

3. Monitor your own stress level and model for your child how to cope with stressful situations. One way to do this is to talk out loud in front of your child. If you had a bad day at work, you can say, "Wow, mommy had a really hard day at work today, but now I am happy to be home, and I think I'll take a nice bubble bath to make myself feel better." This models for your child that how he reacts to stress (what he does and what he says to himself) can make a difference in how he feels.

4. Have reasonable expectations of your child. Praise your child for her unique talents and for characteristics that she can control. Try to avoid praising her for the outcome of her actions. For example, instead of saying, "I am so happy you got an A," you could say "I am so proud of how hard you worked on that paper. You really concentrated on it for a long time and you wrote your ideas down so thoughtfully." This motivates a child to continue working on things that are in her control, and teaches her that effort is more important than results.

5. Help your child anticipate and prepare for major transitions.


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