Children suffer stress like adults

Fredrick Mabikwa Successful Solutions
SOCIETY has always considered stress as an adult phenomenon. This is yet another myth society has about children. Children are also stressed when they have emotional and psychological pressures in their lives.Adults should therefore be able to tell if a child is stressed and then try to assist them accordingly. We read in the Press recently of a minor who committed suicide. This is a good indicator that children like adults are stressed and if they can’t resolve the stress they resolve to things like suicide which society has always thought to be adult behaviour.

I will in this article discuss some common child stressors which adults must look out for. Children get stressed when they are exposed to family ills like domestic violence. When children always see one parent being physically abused by the other parent they get stressed.

This is so especially, when their mother is being battered by their father and the wife battering has become a family culture.

When parents fight all the time, children side with the weaker parent. This leads to children hating the parent who abuses the other parent. Some men who batter their wives also extend the battering to children.

This worsens the children’s situation. Having been in charge of boarding school at some point, I realised that, come end of term, some children become very unhappy because they are relucant to go home. Some children are happier at school than at home. This confirms that some children do not enjoy the home environment.

Some parents are over protective to their children, especially the girl child. This  can cause a child to be stressed. Some parents think that if we allow our girl child to go out with friends, she will come back pregnant. These children who are always locked indoors are very sad and stressed. With my experience with teenagers especially, I have since discovered that locking them up does not really work. You can lock them up for the entire year, but the day they get a chance to go out, they do everything in that day that they could have done in a year. Parents should allow children to go out, but at the same time, supervise this time out, as we know that a lot is happening these days with our children.

Poverty is a big stressor for most children. When a child does not have what other children have, say at school or in the neighbourhood, they are much stressed. At times it is not really that the parent is poor but just the inability by the parent to realise that the child needs something.

When children come to you as  a parent and ask for something, if it’s affordable and will not harm the child, just buy them that thing. With the little ones, it is not your business to judge whether the thing is worth it or important, the thing has been asked for because it is needed. The little ones will be stressed by not having certain toys. Teenagers will be stressed by not having certain electronic gadgets and certain attires. When they are stressed, other facets of their lives are affected, for example school performance. At times when they are under so much peer pressure to own certain things and they don’t get those things, they may resort to unorthodox means to get the things. So our stinginess may stress our children.

With the HIV/Aids scourge, we have children who have lost both parents. We have households headed by children. These children are under so much emotional and psychological pressure to make ends meet.

The older children are under pressure to look after their siblings.

At times the pressure is so much that without proper support from the community in general and extended family, these children can resort to ills like prostitution for the girls and other crimes to look for money.

The burden of assuming adult responsibilities at a tender age is very stressing for these children.

School can be stressful for most children. The little ones in Kindergarten are very sensitive. At times there is a teacher/child mismatch.

The child for some reason doesn’t like the teacher and by not liking the teacher, they end up not liking school.

School also has things like bullying. There is a bully at school who has targeted your child. Suddenly they don’t want to go to school. This is sign of stress. Until and unless the reason for the sudden dislike of school is addressed, the child will always be stressed.

At school, failure can stress a child. We recently read in the Press of a primary school child who committed suicide after failing mock exams.

When they don’t do well in their exams, sit down with them and encourage and motivate them to try hard next time. Don’t start telling them about how much money you are wasting on their fees, money you could have used to buy your cattle. You will stress the children.

When a parent or sibling is down with illness, the child can be stressed. This affects children of all ages. The most affected children are those who find themselves having to nurse the parents. In some instances it’s so bad, adult relatives desert the affected family and children are left to nurse their ill parents.

Some children from rich families are much stressed. This is something I didn’t know until I talked to some children from rich families.

Some say they are under so much pressure from parents who prescribe friends, careers and even character to them so that they maintain certain standards that are perceived as “normal” by society for a rich family.

The children complained that some rich parents want them to behave in a certain manner so that the family status is safeguarded.

Most rich parents, the children said, want them to “behave like rich children” but in reality there is no such behaviour and this stresses them. They indicated that they are always fighting “identity and status” battles with parents at the expense of schoolwork and as such their performance in school drops in the process.

Stress affects children’s health just like it does us the adults. Children do get stress and they need our support to manage it.