Are your kids stressed? [from ErinParenting]

It’s common to hear adults talking about how stressed or overwhelmed they are, but do we hear from our children how they feel? Research finds that between 8 and 10% of North American children are seriously troubled by stress.

I’ll never forget a class meeting I shared with my students some 6 years ago. The students were discussing their feelings and all but 1 boy said, “I’m so stressed!” They were 8 and 9 years old. Probing them further, I asked, “Why?” Here is the short list of reasons they mentioned:
1. Too much homework (I must note that they mentioned subjects areas outside of what I taught since I was always conscious about how much I have and NEVER gave any over the weekends.
2. Sibling Arguments
3. Too many extra-curricular activities ie. feeling overscheduled
4. Parent expectations
5. Home problems
6. Stressed out parents always yelling
It broke my heart to see these young souls sharing their stories of stress.
The only boy that day who wasn’t stressed called out emotionally, “I’m allowed to be a kid!” The room went silent. I asked him what he meant. He replied, still very emotional, “I get home from school, take a shower, put on my pajamas, do my homework, eat dinner, play or read then go to bed. I’m allowed to be a kid, Mrs. Kurt.” He was so right.

Today, our children sleep fewer hours, play fewer hours and spend time by themselves fewer hours than ever before. The result is that they are stressed, even children as young as 3 research shows! One researcher, Dr. Kim Payne, was shocked to return to the United States after having lived and worked in war torn countries helping children cope with post-traumatic stress. What he found was that North American children were exhibiting the same physical and emotional signs of stress as the children in the war torn countries.How can you tell if your child is stressed?
Here are some signs to look for:
Physical:
• reoccurring headaches, neckaches or backaches
• nausea, diarrhea, constipation, stomachache
• shaky hands, sweaty palms
• bed wetting
• trouble sleeping/nightmares
• change in appetite
• frequent colds, fatigue

Emotional or Behavioural:
• new or reoccurring fears; anxiety and worries
• trouble concentrating; frequent daydreaming
• restlessness, irritability
• social withdrawal, unwillingness to participate in school or family activities
• moodiness
• nail biting, thumb sucking, hair twirling, foot tapping
• acting out, anger, tantrums
• regression to baby-like behaviours
• excessive whining or crying
• clinginess, won’t let you out of site

The best thing you can do is to discover the reason behind your child’s stress and then put a few things in place to improve the current dynamics.

:Erin A. Kurt, Stress-Free Parenting Expert, is founder of ErinParenting.com and the author of Juggling Family Life: A Step-By-Step Guide to Stress-Free Parenting, the proven step-by-step program that shows you exactly how to raise happy, respectful and well-adjusted kids in just 3 steps…guaranteed. To get your F.R.E.E. video series and receive her stress-free parenting articles on how to parent without yelling and get your kids to listen to you the first time, visit www.erinparenting.com.

Treating parents like babies

By Lenore Skenazy

If you’re a mother, you might recognise the sentiment “sweet wishes” from the passive-aggressive baby industry that wants you to feel so completely, even dangerously unprepared for the challenges (they’re always challenges) of parenthood that you’ll read its magazines, buy its products and take its advice. Ka-ching!

Here’s a tip from an article on flying a kite with your kid: “Choose a sunny day when there’s no chance of lightning.” You mean, don’t fly kites when there’s a funnel cloud headed for the driveway? Got it. Or how about this pointer from a parenting magazine on how to delight your baby: “Lean in close and kiss her nose.”? Kissing my baby. Why didn’t I think of that?

And here’s my favourite recommendation from a book of “Baby Must-Haves: (a tome on items you simply must buy unless you want baby to be seriously deprived). You’ll get more bang for your buck with a toy that can be played with in more than one way – for instance, a push toy that can also be pulled.”? Now, you’ve got to feel sorry for the poor writer who had to come up with something, anything to say about a pull toy. But can you think of a push toy that can’t be pulled? Can you think of any toy that can’t be pulled, besides a cranky daddy trying to watch a sports channel?

These tips treat parents as if we were the two-yearolds, so wet behind the ears that we need an expert to tell us which games to play, which toys to buy, what to say to our kids and what to feed them. This talking down to parents is big business. The whole gestalt is enough to convince moms that today’s children, unlike those who came before them, do not have their trajectory well mapped out simply by being born human: cry, crawl, toddle, walk, grow up, breed and cry some more.

No, this generation won’t make it without a whole lot of help from specialists, safety gear and Internet searches. But why? Are our children more vulnerable, and we less competent than any previous generation in history?

Parenting culture

Of course not. But that’s the message we get. We live in a time when parents worry about their offspring’s safety, development and health and you name it more than ever, thanks to a parenting industry that relies on turning us into nervous wrecks. It begins even before the baby’s born. There are books and books about what to eat during pregnancy.

As my doctor told me: Just eat like you normally would, only a little more – and add some folic acid. That kind of counsel is too reasonable for the parenting-industrial complex. Taking a chipper-butchiding approach that set the tone for a generation of parenting advice, the What to Expect When You’re Expecting pregnancy guide goes so far as to remind moms-to-be that “each bite” is a chance to give their babies the perfect start. Which must mean that not making “each bite”? nutritionally stellar risks ruining your kid forever.

There’s no rest for the weary parent in this high-alert world, especially after the bundle arrives. Take the baby bath thermometer. The cheapest one looks like a rubber duck. Place it in the tub and if the bathwater is too hot, these words magically appear on its tummy: “TOO HOT.”?

You’d have to be convinced that you’re incapable of testing the temperature with your own hand before you’d buy the gadget. But that’s what that crafty duck is out to do: undermine your confidence in your childrearing

capabilities.

(Forget that the instructions on the package remind adults to “ALWAYS” check the temperature with their hands first!) It’s hard to feel secure about being a good mom when every decision is fraught with consequences.

Things have changed dramatically in a single generation. The worries that make us hyperventilate didn’t even faze our moms. It’s just that then people didn’t see every tiny parenting decision as a big deal.

They didn’t sweat the way we do because they were reading Dr Spock, the child-care guru of the 1950s and 60s, who famously began his book Baby and Child Carewith the words: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. Not, Freak out! Your baby is at a super-important stage and you must devote every fibre of your being to helping him ace it.”?

Today is a day to thank those moms for all they did. It’s also a day to thank the current crop of moms, stuck trying to do their best in the face of a parenting culture that’s insisting, “You’re not doing it right!”? Yes we are. Or at least we’re doing it right enough, thank you, and the odds are very much on our side.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry

• This article was originally published on page 23 of The Mercury on July 13, 2009