It’s All Too Much! Help Your Child Thrive in Today’s Stressful World
We are in the middle of an economic crisis. If we haven’t lost our job, we have lost income, money on our investments, our retirement, or our home. The stress that these financial difficulties place on us can be devastating to our ability to be “here and now,” fully present in our life, appreciating and enjoying what is left, and more importantly, parenting our children in a healthy way.
Many of our children are struggling too, whether they are twenty-three, thirteen, or three. Their lives aren’t any less stressful than ours. They go from the ever increasing academic and social demands of school to activities, practices, clubs, rehearsals, work, dad’s house, mom’s house, feeling the same pressures we do. They are presented daily with the expectation to do better, be better, and get to the next level. Many children experience stress that goes beyond what we would ordinarily imagine or expect for their age. Some live in impoverished, sometimes dangerous communities. Others live in homes with a family member who is ill or abusing drugs or alcohol. Some have been in and out of hospitals trying to survive their own chronic illness.
Others still, try to cope with being different somehow, in a way that makes them a target for abuse. They experience bullying, racism, homophobia, and other forms of hatred and maltreatment at the hands of peers and adults, including siblings and caregivers. In addition to their own daily pressures, our children soak up the stress of the adults around them like a sponge. They feel what we are feeling. They are especially tuned in to us as parents more than we realize. They see and hear, not what we are trying to portray, but what is really going on. The good news is that if we are managing our stress well, engaging in all the things that help us feel balanced and connected, grounded and whole, our children pick up on what is working in our lives and are soothed by their experience of us.
In addition to how we are being with our children, there are many things we can do to help them thrive in the face of these uncertain times, in spite of the pressures that are a normal part of being alive. Relief of their stress is possible, whether they experience ongoing, “chronic” stress or something called “traumatic stress.” Traumatic stress is the result of our children experiencing events that are extraordinarily frightening or difficult. Though you may not believe your child with difficulties has ever experienced a trauma, or that your healthy child ever will, statistics overwhelmingly indicate that, as long as we are living on this unpredictable and often dangerous planet, it is likely that they have or they will.
Traumatic experiences are not, as we would like to believe, outside the range of possibilities for our children. They are not so uncommon that they “couldn’t possibly happen to anyone we know,” let alone to someone we love so much. Dismissing trauma as the possible source of our children’s difficulties and lack of hoped-for success is one of the most costly mistakes we can make. Doing so can prevent us from finding the most effective solutions and has, in many cases, contributed to the continuation of harmful interventions such as the medication or overmedication of children as young as three years of age. When hasty conclusions are drawn without consideration for our child’s entire history and experiences, unnecessary suffering is prolonged for all of us.
Recent neuroscientific study is offering us a way out of our suffering. We know more now than ever more about the how the brain develops, functions and mediates all of learning and behavior. This information is precisely what parents need in order to understand how it is that our children develop some of the problems they do. For instance, when we learn how our child’s brain is affected by stress and trauma, we discover what interventions work best and why. Better still, we realize how to prevent problems from ever developing in the first place.
When parents come to see me, they have questions and concerns about how and why their child is having difficulty with learning or behavior. Because their questions are so important, and because the answers helped their children so much, I decided to write, You Can Heal Your Child: A Guide for Parents of Misdiagnosed, Stressed, Traumatized, and Otherwise Misunderstood Children. The book serves whole families – parents and children – so they will know precisely what to do to get through tough times and any other challenge that may come their way. Please find the book at amazon.com or visit drmelrose.com and help your child today.
Please read Dr. Reggie Melrose’s books, “You Can Heal Your Child” and “Why Students Underachieve: What Educators and Parents Can Do about It.” Visit her website, http://www.DrMelrose.com, for more information and resources.