Help your children feel safe, secure, loved
Stress for Success
January 3, 2012


Are your kids stressed? You need to know because they’re bombarded by stress and have fewer resources than adults to deal with it.

They’re also incredibly resilient, handling much stress and surviving parental missteps. Occasional parental screw-up won’t scar them for life. What’s most important is having ongoing, regular interactions with them – mostly loving and supportive - to weather the normal parent/child tensions.

Loving relationships require regularly spending time connecting with them.

To feel safe kids need you, your values and boundaries to define themselves. This helps them learn how to handle life versus feeling unsafe and reacting out of fear and anxiety, inhibiting learning.

Since you cannot completely shield your kids from stress, the best gift you can give them is to help them feel safe, secure and loved. Rather than tell them what to do teach them how to think through their problems, identify options and their consequences.

But first, recognize when they’re stressed. Here are some age-related symptoms:
· Birth to seven: They operate more emotionally than intellectually reacting to stress with fear and anxiety. They make up all kinds of scary scenarios like wild animals lurking outside. They aren’t sophisticated enough to solve most of their problems so you must comfort and calm them when they’re hurt and afraid, explain things to them, teach and protect them.

Their symptoms include changes in mood, behavior and physical health: e.g., more tantrums, greater fear of separation, stuttering, regression to earlier behaviors, refusal to play, sleeping and eating changes.
· 8 – 12: Their world is fast expanding with more responsibilities, choices, and fears of grown-up stuff. Fitting in with peers is more important so fear of rejection by them is common. Their independence/dependence battle also grows. They’re more unpredictable being loving one moment and lashing out the next. Take their sarcasm and insults lightly. Wisely pick and choose your battles.

They’re enthusiastic learners so purposefully teach them stress management skills. Offer your protection and guidance in a fashion that’s respectful of their growing independence.

Their stress symptoms include changes in mood, behavior and physical health plus changes in thinking. They experience more fear and worry, various aches and pains with no apparent physiological cause, perfectionism, refusal to go to school, lower grades.
· 13 – 18: They’re so sure they know everything yet want to be taken care of, too. They’re more independent, secretive and protective of their space. You’ll often feel shut out. They’re away from home more. Peer pressure has built and can get them into possibly life-threatening situations. Hopefully when faced with important decisions they’ll make wise choices.

Continue to offer your protection and connection though they may resist it. Replace forcing them with influencing them. Assertively state your expectations and the consequences if they choose to behave unacceptably. Follow through with your consequences to have credibility.

Their symptoms are also in thinking, mood, behavior, and physical health; e.g., increased aggression, withdrawal, eating disorders, mood swings, depression, truancy.

Next week I’ll cover creating a stress safety net for your kids.

Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.