Stress in children - recognize the signs | Integrated Learning Therapy

It is very unusual for children to be able to verbalise feelings of stress. Instead, they show unhappiness or stress in their behaviour. Such behaviours aren’t always the expected ones, like illnesses and depression, but can range from throwing tantrums and telling lies to stealing. Here are some signs that may alert you to stress in a child:

Stressed children may complain of physical discomfort, for example, headaches and tummy aches. If doctors find nothing wrong, do consider fear and anxiety being possibly part of the reasons for these complaints. For example, Jan began to refuse to eat breakfast and said that he didn’t want to go to school.All of this started when his father left to work overseas a month or so ago and the stress of the separation caused his symptoms.

Boys especially may show disturbed and disruptive behaviour.Adults may label his actions as being naughty or undisciplined but it is worth looking for other causes too.
Other children may react to stress by withdrawing and being quiet.Their stress is difficult to spot because even their parents may not notice they have problems.
Most children have difficulties talking about their mental stress. They don’t have the vocabulary or the ability to translate strong feelings into words.Conflicting emotions and thoughts make it even harder for them, for example, when they experience anger, jealousy, hostility and unhappiness with their parents, siblings or other people.
Sometimes the cause of stress in children may be the parents themselves.These days, children are aware of the high rates of divorce so parental conflict may make them scared of a parent leaving them. While it may be healthy to argue superficially in front of your children (and so model conflict resolution), personal attacks on each other should be avoided and conflict over parenting styles or how to care for children should be private. For example, Bettie’s parents often quarreled over her upbringing and schoolwork. She resorted to stealing sweets from the local café in an attempt to distract her parents from their frequent arguments. Unfortunately, they misinterpreted her behaviour and punished her severely.

It’s natural for children to show emotional disturbances or behaviour difficulties from time to time. They suffer fears at certain ages that may be stressful for them; toddlers do throw temper tantrums that have nothing to do with real stress; teenagers commonly show defiance at some stage or another. But do be on the lookout and seek professional help

When your child is doing something that is not expected for her age and circumstances

If the child is causing or experiencing suffering or a period of distress in his or her life
Should you notice that the child’s ability to lead a healthy, normal life has been affected.

Stress in childhood can create much distress for not only the children but also for those who care for them. Severe stress left untreated can delay their physical, psychological, social and intellectual development. This in turn affects their ability to function in their daily life and may lead to underachievement at school and beyond.

Content of this post was based on information in the book ‘Help your child to cope’ by Dr C Yiming & Dr D Fung.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.