Stress and our Children - Research Paper Example

 Stress and our Children Abstract Since few decades, stress has become a major concern of most of the families around the globe that has resulted in enormous number of researches on it. In specific, this paper is an attempt to look at the factors that are causing stress related problems in particularly, children, their consequences, biological and emotional perspectives, and possible actions from parents for creating a stress proof environment. Conformity to the new school norms, high expectation of parents in terms of good grades, fear of punishment from teachers, fear of being away from home, and fear of wetting themselves are some of the common causes of stress in children discussed in the paper. In addition, the paper includes discussion on different hormonal changes that cause stress. Moreover, the last part of the paper deals with the tips and techniques for parents to effectively deal with stress problems of children. The parents can ensure the same through ensuring actions and elements like being ready and open towards for communication at any level, teaching kids honesty, friendliness, dignity, teaching them how to react at different situations. Introduction It is very common to hear any parent telling their children “we have gone through what you are going”, “we understand your problem because we have been there and done that” or “we were of your age once and therefore we know what you are feeling”. None of these claims is justified considering the today’s world and the young generation. For the past few decades, the human generation has been changing; moreover, this change is taking place at an exponential rate. Quite understandably, the recipient of these changes is new generation, children of today, teenagers, and youth. The world that the baby boomers, baby busters, and Generation Y witnessed in their youth was completely different from what the children of today are facing. Internet, media, diversity, globalization, mobile phones, technology and many other discoveries and inventions have completely changed the lives of this generation. Therefore, it is not sensible for the parents of today to compare themselves with their children (Chansky, 2008). What the children of are facing is something unique and have never been felt before by anyone Moreover, these technologies have created issues, concerns, problems, debates that never existed before and the as mentioned earlier, the primary recipients of these changes are the youth (Oxington, 2005). Quite clearly, the life of these children is filled with stress, trauma, anxiety, and worry, factors that are causes depression, pressures, and angst. Therefore, it has become imperative for parents to change their lens of looking at the unusual behavior of their children and put themselves into the shoes of their kids to explore the ideal methods for helping their children to cope with the stress issues (Haggerty, Sherrod & Garmezy, 1996). This paper is an attempt to look at the factors that are causing stress related problems in children, their consequences, biological and emotional perspectives, and possible actions from parents for creating a stress proof environment (Stien & Kendall, 2004). Discussion Before discussing anything else, it is imperative here to understand the major causes of stress in children. Stress for children may come from their school, home and peers or friends. Many factors at school lead to stressful situations for children. Conformity to the new school norms, high expectation of parents in terms of good grades, fear of punishment from teachers, fear of being away from home, fear of wetting themselves (in case of kids only) (Dwivedi, 2000). Moreover, factors like fear of getting into good high schools or universities, completion of assignments, homework, and others create significant pressures for children and youth in schools and high schools are a part of the same (Shapiro, Sprague & McKay, 2009). At home elements like family issues, divorce of parents, domestic violence, death of a family member, financial problems, absence of a parent for a long period time, avoidance by a parent or guardian, inability to connect well with a parent, internal family conflicts. In addition, step parent or stepbrothers and sisters, generation gap, moving from one town or the other, fear of elder brothers and sisters, fear that the secrets from school or friends would be revealed and many others. However, friends or peer pressure has also proved itself as one of the biggest stressor for children (Stien & Kendall, 2004). Fear of being different from others, pressure of conformity with group members, tensions regarding impressing boy/girl friends, attracting them or keeping them, dating problems, relationship problems, fear of presenting or discussing the body changes and pressure of being “cool”. Moreover, bullying, leakage of secrets in friends and unknown peers, peer pressure, being jealous from a group of peers, pressures from friends for engaging in drug or alcohol abuse and others are a part of the same list (McVey-Noble, Khemlani-Patel & Neziroglu, 2006). It is also important to have a look at the symptoms of stress in children. There has been a lot of research on symptoms of stress in kids, children and teenagers and most of them reveal that these symptoms vary from different cases due to cultural factors, environmental concerns, biological factors, genetic factors, and various other reasons (Shapiro & Holmes, 2008). However, yet we can generalize in this case. Anxiety, irritability, nightmare, sleeping difficulties, headaches, stomachaches, body pains, continuous or severe illness, poor eating habits or over eating, emotional vulnerability, slow growth or in some cases regression to previous developmental levels, poor grades, difficulty in making friends or socializing with people (Shapiro, Sprague & McKay, 2009). This list goes on to include elements and factors like extreme shyness or aggressiveness, gross motor skills, general distrust of the world, lack of self esteem, concentration issues, toileting issues, frequent wetting of pants or beds (Arnold, 1990). Furthermore, drug abuse, substance abuse, poor decision making skills, nail biting, increased anger levels, constipation, diarrhea, increased sweating, loss of appetite, breathing problems, muscle tensions and others. Lack of energy, considerable mood swings, over sensitivity, hurting him, thumb sucking, memory loss, or inability to remember schoolwork, avoidance of school activities, social boycott in home and in school, baby talk and others (McVey-Noble, Khemlani-Patel & Neziroglu, 2006). It is also important here to look at the stress system with the biological perspective. The limbic system of human beings consists of hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, pituitary glands, and the amygdala. Thalamus is the part of the brain that receives all the information and then forwards the information to hippocampus, amygdala, and neo-cortex (Hollander, 2008). These three parts of the brain would evaluate the stimulus and if the stimulus were stressful then the hypothalamus would come into action by secreting corticotrophin-releasing factor or CRF (Shapiro, Sprague & McKay, 2009). The pituitary gland responds to the CRF by releasing adrenocorticotropin hormone or ACTH. However, more importantly for this discussion, when ACTH reaches into the blood stream causes adrenal glands to release glucocorticoids or cortisol. Now the rest of the discussion would move forward with discussing the dynamics and effects of cortisol (Stien & Kendall, 2004). However, it is important to consider the fact that repetitive, chronic, or continued stress can desensitize hypothalamus (Arnold, 1990). Since cortisol is released in response to stress situations, once the stressful situation is over, the whole system of this secretion shuts down and cortisol circulates back to hypothalamus. However, with repetitive stress, hypothalamus fails to stop its secretion of CRF, which causes nonstop secretion of ACTH from the pituitary glands, thus, resulting in excessive amounts of cortisol in the body. Before understanding the side effects of excessive secretion of cortisol, it is important to contrast it with another hormone called Dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA (Chansky, 2008). Despite the fact that much has been written on the effects and role of this hormone, but many agree that it forms the foundation of youth. In other words, it is stimulates or prepares the body for sexual activity. Research reveals that the body produces the maximum quantities of during the ages of seven to twenty five. Even more importantly, DHEA and cortisol try to remain in balance in the body and share an inverse relationship with each other in terms of periods of secretion. DHEA’s secretion in the body reaches its peak during the evening when the cortisol production levels are declining steadily (McVey-Noble, Khemlani-Patel & Neziroglu, 2006). Conversely, cortisol levels touch their peak at around eight AM in the morning when the DHEA levels are negligible. Quite understandably, cortisol arouses and stimulates performance of the human body since its goal is to help the body to cope with the pressure of stressful situations. Repetitive or continuous stress in children may disturb the production of DHEA and if the cortisol levels remain high even in the nighttime, the child may develop insomnia (Schab, 2008). How can one expect the body to relax, shut down its systems and sleep, when the brain is secreting hormones that act like steroids? That explains why kids have troubling falling asleep or keeping himself asleep or a longer period (Shapiro & Holmes, 2008). Furthermore, the consequence of insomnia may be fatigue and depression. Moreover, the body has its own system according to which it conducts most of the repair functions during the sleep time. However, inability to get that sleep hinders the repair and building process in a child’s body thus leading to pain and other diseases (Humphrey, 2004). It should be noted here that since cortisol is hormone secreted in response to stress situations, it has the power to affect virtually every part of a child or even an adult’s body. In fact, it is an excellent way of arranging the body’s energy consumption in such a way that to cope with the stress of survival. As we know that glucose or sugar is the fuel for body, therefore, cortisol immediately stimulates a process known as glucogenesis that causes an increase in the production of glucose production (Tanner, 2007). More importantly, it breaks down the protein present in the body to form the required glucose. Moreover, during a stressful situation, the brain orders the body to shut down all other functions of metabolism, growth, repair and others and focus on coping up with the stress situation. This explains why kids that face severe stress in any forms are not able to have healthy and rapidly growing bodies (Arnold, 1990). There is also much research on the topic of the effect of elevated levels of cortisol on the immune and digestive system of the body. High levels of cortisol cause the occurrence of microscopic holes in the intestinal walls which quite understandably, causes the leakage of undigested food, acid, microbes, and toxins in the body (Stien & Kendall, 2004). It is more commonly known as the leaky gut syndrome. The first negative consequence that it can have on kid’s body is that it would trigger a response from the immune system (Shapiro & Holmes, 2008). Despite the fact that the same problem is also there for adults but since children are more venerable to diseases and germs, their immune system does a more crucial job. In simple terms, immune system acts as the defense system of body and on entrance of any foreign or unknown object; it is the job of immune system to launch an attack. The problem here is that the immune system perceives that the particles leaking out of the intestinal tracks are all viruses and bacteria (and some of them really are viruses and bacteria), it directs all its energies towards fighting with them (Shapiro, Sprague & McKay, 2009). However, at the same time, the real germs are not sitting quite, so the immune system fights with them as well. The real problem here is that the immune system will now have to remain active for most of the time, every time the kid would eat anything, the intestinal track would leak particles, and the immune system would come into action. This puts immense pressure on the immune system of children thus making them extremely vulnerable to diseases that could be prevented otherwise (Chansky, 2008). The second negative consequence of the same is that it creates a “merry go round” for toxins in the body. Consider liver as a waste management treatment of the body having the job to screen all the blood circulating the body and detoxify it (Haggerty, Sherrod & Garmezy, 1996). The liver separates the toxins from the pure blood and sends it upwards towards the heart and lung for pumping and oxidation respectively. It sends the toxins towards the intestinal tract for the excretion from the body (Shapiro, 2008). However, with the holes in the intestinal tract some of these toxins are able to enter into the blood stream one more time thus increasing the work for liver. Coupled with hunger due to tiredness and pain mentioned above, this causes obesity (Humphrey, 2004). In addition, these high cortisol levels may destroy the cells of immune system, rob these cells of the necessary chemicals, and even damage the thymus gland, which is involved in the production of immune cells (McVey-Noble, Khemlani-Patel & Neziroglu, 2006). This last part of the paper deals with the tips and techniques for parents to effectively deal with stress problems of children. Quite understandable, there is a lot of material available on the internet on the same in form of effective parenting guides and others. The paper would review some of them very briefly. Building an environment that promotes trust and communication is the most important of all. The parents can ensure the same through ensuring actions and elements like being ready and open towards for communication at any level, teaching kids honesty, friendliness, dignity, teaching them how to react at different situations. In addition, never hiding truth from your child no matter how scary the truth is but if there is a probability that the child is going to know it from other sources sooner or latter then it is better to make him or aware about it (Chansky, 2008). Furthermore, showing confidence on the child and his abilities and making him the part of important decision making events at house, encouraging the child to share his feelings and in return share your own feelings in response. Moreover, sharing anticipated family changes is also very vital, Passively Monitoring television shows that the child watches and the internet games that he or she plays, praising children for their right actions, encourage gentle humor and many other techniques may he useful in this regard (Shapiro & Holmes, 2008). Even the Holy Bible has a lot to say about it. One of the best ways would be to nurture and grow the Love of God in hearts and minds of the kids and then no other fear or stress would be able to disturb them. Calling the Almighty in times of stress and troubles is the best solution to all problems. As the Holy bible tells on various occasions, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. (Psalm 46:1-3). When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. (Psalm 34:17). The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe. (Proverbs 18:10) Fear of others will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. (Proverbs 29:25). Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest” (Luke 12:25-26). Quite clearly, even if we can make the study of Holy bible a routine of our lives, all the problems and stress in the lives of our lives and the lives of our children would be vanished. References Arnold, L. Eugene. (1990). Childhood stress. John Wiley and Sons. Chansky, Tamar E. (2008). Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking: Powerful, Practical Strategies to Build a Lifetime of Resilience, Flexibility, and Happiness. Da Capo Press. Dwivedi, Kedar Nath. (2000). Post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents. Whurr. Haggerty, Robert J., Sherrod, Lonnie R., & Garmezy, Norman. (1996). Stress, risk, and resilience in children and adolescents: processes, mechanisms, and interventions. Cambridge University Press. Hollander, Michael. (2008). Helping Teens Who Cut: Understanding and Ending Self-Injury. Guilford Press. Humphrey, James Harry. (2004). Childhood stress in contemporary society. Routledge. McVey-Noble, Merry E., Khemlani-Patel, Sony, & Neziroglu, Fugen A. (2006). When your child is cutting: a parent's guide to helping children overcome self-injury. New Harbinger Publications. Oxington, Kimberly V. (2005). Stress and health: new research. Nova Publishers. Schab, Lisa M. (2008). The Anxiety Workbook for Teens: Activities to Help You Deal With Anxiety & Worry. New Harbinger Publications. Shapiro, Lawrence E. (2008). Learning to Listen, Learning to Care: A Workbook to Help Kids Learn Self-control & Empathy. New Harbinger Publications. Shapiro, Lawrence E., & Holmes, Julia. (2008). Let's Be Friends: A Workbook to Help Kids Learn Social Skills & Make Great Friends. New Harbinger Publications. Shapiro, Lawrence E., Sprague, Robin K., & McKay, Matthew. (2009). The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook for Kids: Help for Children to Cope with Stress, Anxiety, and Transitions. New Harbinger Publications. Stien, Phyllis T., & Kendall, Joshua C. (2004). Psychological trauma and the developing brain: neurologically based interventions for troubled children. Routledge. Tanner, Ralph E. S. (2007). Social behavior of children. Concept Publishing Company. Read More