Not Too Young to be Stressed Out

Your child has a stomach ache each morning before school.  Or maybe it’s a headache.  Is she making it up?  Is it a psychosomatic illness (physical illness caused by emotions)?  Is it just stress, or does she have a tumor or something dangerous?

Turns out that stress can be dangerous too.

Stress is necessary in a child’s life, but a child overwhelmed with tension and pressure can spin out of control.

“Too little stress and we fall into boredom, poorly engaged with our lives and the world around us.  Too much stress and the brain starts to sputter and shut down its peak efficiency.  Just the right amount of stress creates the ideal blend of being awake and alert without the damaging chemical interactions that occur at higher stress levels in the body.” (The Highly Intuitive Child, by Catherine Crawford)

Are your teens caught in the “triple-bind” of unhealthy, stereotypical expectations: needing to be competitive, nurturing, and flawless? asks Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.  

These expectations are both “physically and psychologically impossible.”

These unrealistic expectations lead to anxiety disorders—nearly 38 percent of teen girls have an anxiety disorder, as do 26 percent of boys, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. 

Many girls cry and try harder to please, while boys often act out or give up.  

In addition to the "fight or flight" response that is automatic to all of us, girls also use "tend and befriend", says Dr. Shelley Taylor and and her team at UCLA.  A woman will continue to take care of her baby or other duties when overwhelmed, but also turn to other mothers for support.  “Even if a girl wants to be alone, “ says Regan Gurung, prof. of psychology and human development at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Green Bay, “spending time with other girlfriends is probably one of the best things she can do for her coping.”  But not if the group she turns to has mean girls who argue, compare, and compete and increase her stress.

Symptoms of stress in your child: 

1.     Eating changes…either they won’t eat, or they overeat to deaden the pain that stress causes.  This can lead to anorexia or obesity.

2.     Somatic – the stress or anxiety expresses itself as actual physical symptoms: headache, stomach aches, nausea, weakness, muscle tension.  Once I sent two of my teen-aged girls on a flight to visit their aunt and uncle in Puerto Rico.  Once we got to the airport, the oldest ran into the bathroom and vomited.  I couldn’t decide if it was stress or something like the flu.  I ended up putting her on the plane and hoped for the best.  She was fine and they enjoyed their visit (except for the giant cockroaches).

3.     Negative coping habits - bed wetting, nail biting, hair pulling or chewing, thumb or finger sucking, stuttering.

4.     Nightmares and other sleep disturbances leading to fatigue.  Fatigue leads to more stress, stress leads to more fatigue.

5.     Mood and behavior changes such as increase in crying, anger, tantrums, irritability, and acting out.

6.     Change in bowels.  This is one way my body deals with stress.  I agreed to ski with my husband after our children left home, but I never got over my fear of skiing.  Each ski day, before we left for the slopes, I got diarrhea.  (I know, too much information).

8.     Avoidance of what stresses them - he doesn’t want to go to school, she'd rather stay home than to be with friends, etc.   

   
    Our kids may not want to go to school, or go to an activity, or whatever stresses them out.  My sister, as a young child, was afraid of attending movies just because there might be something scary there.

9.     Excessive worry or uncontrolled fear.

10.   School – grades, poor concentration.

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11.   Self-harm such as cutting, pinching, picking, etc.  These are often where they can’t be seen such as thighs, upper arms, stomach.  I know of one child who picked sores into her scalp.

Daily stress that is a little too much can lead to chronic anxiety in a child.  

Chronic anxiety can lead to OCD, phobias, panic attacks, and other anxiety disorders; it can also cause high blood pressure and other heart disease, weakened immune system, depression, obesity or anorexia.  Also, as I said before, self-harm: cutting, burning, scraping, picking at their own skin.  24 percent of girls and 11 percent of boys reported hurting themselves at least once in the last year.

On the outside, our young people are excelling, but on the inside, many feel they are imploding. 

We all have stress.  Anyone who feels overwhelmed feels stress.

Possible Causes:

1.     Social…worry about being accepted, bullying, feeling inadequate.  He may be an introvert.  She may be intuitive and feel other's pain and worries.

2.     School…grades, schoolmates, teachers, expectations.

3.     Perfectionism… they can never measure up, never be good enough

4.     Body image, not feeling beautiful or sexy.  “You have a zit here, and here and here, and you’re not as skinny as you should be, or you are too skinny without any curves, your legs are too long, [or you are too short]—there’s so many things wrong about you,” said stress sufferer Katherine in a Deseret News article.

 “Even compliments and well-meaning praise from friends and teachers add to her anxiety, as she’s told she’s ‘friends with everyone,’ ‘so perfect,’ and ‘super smart.’

“’ When that’s all you hear,” she says, ‘then it just becomes something that’s not a compliment anymore—it’s an expectation.’”

“You’ll Never be good enough” by Sara Israelsen-Hartley and Erica Evans. 

How to Help:

This is really tricky.  We don’t want to intensify their feelings, feed their fear, enable their avoidance.  And yet we don’t want to dismiss it either.  We don’t want them to think we don’t care.  We want to reassure them.  It is so easy to say, “Don’t worry.  There’s nothing to be afraid of.”  But it doesn’t do any good.  They can’t hear it.  Their brain won’t let them.  The dump of brain chemicals from stress puts the logical prefrontal cortex on hold while the more automated emotional brain takes over.  They literally can’t be logical or think clearly.  

So here are some things that will help:

1. Physical activity:  Help them exercise, play, do sports, move their body.  Activity elevates mood.

2. Sleep…teens need 9-10 hours a night, most get 7.4 or less.  Stress causes sleep disturbances, sleep deprivation enhances stress.  Keep TV, electronics out of bedroom (teach them that bedrooms are for sleeping).  

Omit the electronics for an hour before bedtime…the blue screen turns off the melatonin which helps the body go to sleep. Help them to wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day.  It is hard for teens to get enough shut eye with early school start times, homework, school and extracurricular activities. 

Psychologist Damour believes the lack of sleep, due to increasingly busy schedules and late-night technology use, is the most powerful biological explanation for rising anxiety rates among teenage girls, who need more sleep than any other demographic.  “Sleep is the glue that holds human beings together,” she says.  Negative emotions surface.  “When girls feel crummy, they’re more likely to internalize those messages and believe they’re bad, while boys take the negative messages and believe something’s wrong with the world, says Lisa Feldman Barrett, Northeastern Univ. psychology professor.  She encourages parents to remind their teens that feeling unpleasant may simply be a sign they need a nutritious meal, some exercise, and 42 more hours of sleep. (Deseret News)

3. Give them healthy meals at regular times.  Teach them about the brain-gut connection.  Food plays an integral part in how people feel.  There is a link between proper nutrition and feeling healthy, physically and mentally.

4. Balance work and fun.  All work and no play make Jack a stressed boy.  Maybe set up a worry time.  You have 10 or 15 minutes to worry about anything.  At the end of that time, you then turn it off.  Compartmentalize.

5. Find what they are good at, praise and do more of that.  Focus on their strengths.  Promote self-esteem and self-confidence.  

Teach self-compassion and that they don’t need to be perfect or even better than others.  “You tried your best.  You’re only human and a lot of people struggle with this,” accompanied by soothing self-touch, like hands over the heart or wrapped around the waist.  Teach positive self-talk and help them use empowering phrases.  But be careful.  Sometimes praise just becomes something more they feel they have to live up to.

6. Talk it out.  Help them name and express their emotions.  They may need the words.  (overwhelmed, worried, frustrated?)  For young children you can read them picture books about emotions.  Older children can use funny emotion face charts (emoticons?)  “When we don’t name the things we feel strongly about, we feel shame,” says Rachel Simmons, cofounder of Girls Leadership and author of “Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Lives.  “Shame silences people.”

7. Be gentle but persistent in keeping lines of communication open.  Listen without judgement (and without distraction). Children are often more comfortable talking side by side, rather than face to face, like in car ride, or taking a walk together.  Help them work through things, instead of jumping in to fix them.

8. Spend time together.  Have fun together.  Use physical touch.  Be affectionate even if it's just a pat on the back or an arm draped over the shoulder.  (Can I give you a hug?  I’m always good for a hug when you are ready.)

9. Encourage real relationships, not just digital ones.  Help them talk to people face to face.  Get them to serve others helps them engage and to build relationship skills and see there is more to the world than their own struggles.  But if group is toxic, ask them if the relationship is energizing or draining.  Show them that sometimes it’s ok to walk away.

10. Exposure to stress producing triggers.  When facing their fears, have them take baby steps.  For instance, Kent was in a car accident and is afraid to drive in case he is in another accident.  His first step may be to just sit in the driver's seat.  Next, he might drive up and down the driveway with his mother in the car.  He might next choose to drive around a deserted parking lot.  Then a street with little traffic with his mother.  Then without his mother.  Gradually he can work up to driving in traffic.  He learns to survive what worries him in manageable doses and in low risk situations.

11. Safe and stable home life—routine.  When one of my daughters was 5 or 6, she started stuttering.  She had other symptoms of stress, like bed-wetting, sucking her finger, picking at her scalp.  I thought she would just outgrow those, but the stuttering scared me.  I took her to a language specialist, who told me to make her life very routine.  Make meals at the same time every day.  Have homework time and chore time and bedtime scheduled and keep the schedule. 

Let her always know what to expect and create a place of calm for her.  With five children at the time, our life had been a little chaotic.  I established the routine, and not only did her stuttering stop, so did the other stress symptoms.

12. Acknowledge feelings, stay calm, show matter-of-fact empathy.  You understand how they feel (you get it) but you’re not changing course (they still go to school).

Evaluate for sensory overload and reduce sensory inputs.  Monitor and limit TV and electronic exposure.

13. Show role models who struggled, especially if they are good at something your child values.  Look on YouTube.  “Boys seem to respond more strongly than girls to role models who admit challenges and succeed anyway,” Jeffery Gregson, therapist. When young people realize they are not alone, there is a very powerful healing effect,” said Simmons

14. Teach coping skills such as breathing deeply, mindfulness of the now (5 things she can see, 4 things she can feel, three things she can smell, 2 things she can hear, and one thing she can taste…grounding mind through senses).  

15. Teach distracting skills: shift gears and orient to the present moment.  Go from “what if” to “what is”.   Younger children can turn to a coping box, older ones to a Calm-Harm app. 

When doing something they feel is risky, tell themselves they are excited rather than nervous or anxious.  It can change the body’s response. 

16. Set a good example of how to handle stress.  If you fly off the handle, they are less likely to have calm responses to stress.

17. Get them checked out by a doctor to make sure the problems aren’t physical.  Maybe the stomach aches are from a dairy allergy instead of school stress.  

Maybe the “not feeling well” is from Lime disease and not anxiety.  Also, if the anxiety becomes disabling, see a doctor.  They may need medication or therapy.

But if it is stress, learning how to handle it as a child will bless them all of their lives.  So many of us as adults don’t know how to cope with stress and we become crippled emotionally and sick physically.  Our children, properly trained,  will be able to use stress as an energizer, rather than a drain on their emotions and functions.