Positive And Negative Effects Of Stress

When children experience a traumatic event, not only does it affect their emotions but it can affect many areas of development if not all of them. Equally, health and learning difficulties can also have a less desirable effect on holistic development. By looking at how such factors can affect child development, we can work towards finding a suitable learning method and helping children overcome and recover from their experiences.

Throughout life, both children and adults experience varying amounts of stress in their everyday lives. For the most part, this has been proven to be healthy and crucial in strengthening their response to such stimuli later in life. This paper will focus on the findings of various studies in which researchers have found links between stress exposure and childhood development. Specifically, this paper will focus on the effects of what is known as toxic stress and its effects on the development of a child and its role in the development of mental disorders as the child transitions into adulthood.

Resilience is often an indicator of future success as an adult and can help to protect children against emotional and behavioural problems etc

Such toxic stress can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across the lifespan. Learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy child development. The most effective prevention is to reduce exposure of young children to extremely stressful conditions. Research also indicates that supportive, responsive relationships with caring adults as early in life as possible can prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress response (Center on Developing Child, nd). By establishing clear lines of communication between adults and children, and home and school, parents and teachers can help to shape children’s perceptions in informed ways. During times of trouble, when emotions run high, parents and teachers can help children develop the skills necessary to manage their feelings, to confront unpleasant or adverse realities, and to acquire greater emotional stability. In order to support children in better understanding their world, adults may have to help them come to terms with circumstances that are frightening, confusing, overwhelming, or possibly unrelated to their past experience. By providing a safe and supportive environment and a healthy acceptance of all that is good in life, a calm and ready-to-listen adult can facilitate children’s well being, and help to alleviate the fear, dismay or confusion they may feel. In doing so, it is important to honor and nurture children’s sensitivity. Although parents and teachers cannot shelter children from all adversity, they are well positioned to help children learn about the imbalances in the world, to better comprehend their impact, and to find thoughtful ways to strike a comfortable and meaningful balance of their own (Foster & Matthews,

Children in middle childhood can face situation that cause psychological stress on them. However, the child can build up resilience against such stress. A child’s temperament and master-oriented approaches towards situation can help because this allows the child to take a personal initiative to a problem rather than being a victim. The relationship between parent and child can play a factor. If there is a warm, loving relationship vs. a cold, neglecting relationship, the child is more likely to do better in a difficult situation. Another factor to building resilience is having the child have a non-family member adult as a support system. When there is another adult in the picture, the parents and child may feel less stress in a situation if

The aspects of the article that are the most significant are the protective factors within the individual, the family, and the community. It addresses the characteristics of resilient children in school and within the family how each role may varies.

From research it is quite clear that the individual as well as various environmental aspects play an important role in influencing well-being as a whole. Research suggests that increased levels of emotional stress can often coincide with increasing issues in the family, peer groups and in the school. In addition, a child’s resilience and ability to cope with these issues can be affected by their personal

According to Egger and Arnold, stated in one study of children age 2-5, more than half (52.5 percent) had experienced some severe stressors in their lifetime (Egger & Angold, 2004, as cited in NCTSN, n.d.). Traumatic events have an overwhelming effects on children’s emotional, mental, and physical health. Many children might have feelings of

Stressful environment is a key factor when it comes to child development. Stress can be the molding of a child’s life. There are several different contributing factor of stress that could affect a child. Stress for a child can come from many areas of their life, such as, in the home, neighborhood, school, community, family issues. However, it is extremely important to realize that there is no greater cause of stress to a child than from their parents (Blake 26). Witnessing verbal and physical abuse in the home is a very

Despite these concurring viewpoints, there are fundamental differences between these perspectives. The medical/disease perspective focuses on the costs of early stressful experiences, asserting that exposure to early life adversity disrupts normal development, causing dysregulations in biological systems (Ellis & Del Giudice, 2014). As outlined by Del Giudice and Ellis (2016), research from this perspective generally focuses on unfavorable health outcomes associated with early stress exposure, such as reduced performance on intelligence tests and greater prevalence of psychopathology. The evolutionary perspective, in contrast, extends the understanding of epigenetically-based developmental processes by examining the benefits of stress responsivity and its orchestration of adaptive developmental patterns. According to the ACM, organisms have calibrated their systems via environmental cues to adapt physiological and behavioral systems to their current and future environments (Del Giudice & Ellis, 2016). Therefore, despite potential impairments/costs, there should also be adaptations; for example, as discussed by Ellis & Del Giudice (2014), adolescents

The article mainly discusses how Thompson is researching how stress can affect a children’s developing for both for good or for worse; both neurologically and biologically. But he also discusses how the chronic stress that children undergoes can be moderated or even reversed because the child’s brain is still developing. He focuses on kids who either: live in poverty, witness domestic violence, live in foster care, are abused or neglected, etc. to see how resources provided to children and stress can threaten a child’s development. Thompson argues that children are designed to rely on their early experiences to help shape themselves to become healthy or maladaptive. He divides his article in several sections each giving different information on development biology, stress, and developmental plasticity. Each section then ties to how it can contribute to a developing child.

According to Naviaux’s, during early brain development it triggers the chronic danger response when an individual is experiencing stress. He proposes that a stress can came from an environmental influence, genetic problem, or both. “When the brain cells stop talking, so do children,” he

The word ‘resilience’ is derived from the Latin word ‘resilire’ which translates as ‘to bounce back’, it can be described as a dynamic process, encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). In cases where children have experienced trauma or are living in high stress environments, resilience has been defined as the capacity to adapt and thrive despite challenging and threatening circumstances (Masten, 2001). Resilience is not something some children ‘have a lot of’, it is something that develops as a result of complex transactions between the child and their environment (Sroufe, 1997). It is perceived as a crucial element in maintaining and promoting

Vulnerability and resilience among children continues to be a popular topic in research of developmental psychology. The two definitions are closely tied together as they are considered both sides to the spectrum. Schaffer (2006) defines vulnerability and resilience “as the susceptibility to develop malfunctioning following exposure to stressful life events, as opposed to the capacity to maintain competent functioning stress”. If stressful life events are the trigger here, why is it that some children are far more vulnerable, yet others are more resilient? The three studies discussed in this paper will attempt to explain why these differences occur and what can we do to enhance protective factors.

According to the article, “Stress and Child Development” (2014) by Ross Thompson, stress is defined as “a complex psychobiological process with biological, emotional, mental, and behavioral consequences, all of which influence one another” (Thompson, 2014, p.46). Thompson’s research provided insight into helping children who suffer from stress, and cope with this stress through neurobiological processes, including two-generation and multi-generation intervention, which includes parents, teachers, relatives and grandparents or anyone who provides care for these children. Thompson’s research found that children who grow up in a loving environment are less stressful, and when confronted with stress, these children cope with stress better than children who live in a non-loving environment. Thompson suggested that stress is brought on when an individual feels threatened or when her or she feels surrounded by, or in immediate danger, thus, emphasizing how a child’s social experiences plays a key role in the development of a child’s neurological systems as well as his or her biological system (Thompson, 2014). Thompson’s research of Hurricane Katrina found that children whose parents could no longer provide care for their children faired much worse than children whose parents provided care, as it relates to stress. Thompson’s study of a Romanian orphanage found that the sooner a child was adopted into a loving environment, the sooner a child learned how to cope and