There’s hardly a working mom out there who doesn’t feel stressed, but we’re not the only ones. The heat is on our kids, too. We know that academic anxiety and peer pressure take their toll, but recent research reveals other surprising causes of kid stress these days. The upside: There’s a lot you can do to help your child go from harried to happy.
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The pressure peaks on Sundays. The Ciulla family of New York City brace themselves for the week ahead. “I call it ‘Sunday afternoon anxiety’—and we all feel it,” says Phebe Neely Ciulla, who’s a senior manager at Deloitte, mom of 7-year-old Maria and 2-year-old Carlo and stepmom of 14-year-old Michael and 9-year-old Katie. The strain is particularly hard on Maria. Her parents are divorced. She lives in tight quarters with her mom, her stepdad, two step-siblings who come and go and a half-brother. “She’s in second grade at a school that has high expectations on her performance, and, frankly, so do I,” admits Phebe. “I travel a lot for work, and so does my husband, so consistency and a predictable routine are hard to maintain. When Maria’s really stressed, she has bad dreams and acts up. If I’m catching a plane the next day, she’ll sometimes say, ‘I wish you were staying here,’ and she’ll cling to me, reluctant to let go when we hug goodbye. It’s gut-wrenching.”
We live in a pressure-cooker world, and our kids suffer some degree of stress because of it. But do we know how much? at least 20 percent of children say they worry “a lot” about things in their lives, according to the recent Stress in America Survey by the American Psychological Association (APA). But only 8 percent of parents report that their kids experience a great deal of stress.
“I’m trying to do well in school, and I’m working two jobs to save money for college and to pay for my car,” says 16-year-old Gunnar Bankoski of Dunkirk, NY. “I have so much to do and so many people needing me that I often feel like I’m spreading myself too thin.”
In addition to the tensions of their own lives, children absorb their parents’ stress more than moms and dads realize. Most parents say their own stress levels aren’t healthy, with a third describing their stress as “extreme” (8 to 10 on a 10-point scale), the APA study shows. Working moms seem especially vulnerable. In a recent online survey of nearly 600 working parents, 88 percent said they suffered at least one stress-related health problem. It’s not hard to understand why parents are stressed out. In the wake of the Great Recession, three quarters of parents surveyed by the APA say they worry about money and half worry about losing their jobs.
But there seems to be a sort of denial when it comes to our kids. a full 69 percent of parents say their stress has little or no impact on their children, yet 91 percent of kids say they know when their parents are stressed because they yell, argue or complain more. And, depending on age, between a third and half of older kids say their parents’ stress makes them feel sad and worried.
Kid Stress Escalation
Stress builds as children get older. “As kids move from elementary school through middle school, and then high school, things get harder in every way—academically, socially and athletically,” says Jeanine Swenson, MD, a pediatrician, marriage and family therapist and mother of three teens in Milwaukee. “We’re now seeing a professionalism of childhood where the emphasis is on gaining skills and being a star rather than on having fun and doing something you enjoy. There’s this push from a very early age to get your kids in there, this idea that it’s this big competition, a big race.” It’s kind of like being little adults. And the strain is affecting kids’ health: About a third of children in the APA survey experience sleep problems, headaches and upset stomachs.
There’s also new evidence linking childhood obesity to stress. Nearly a third of america’s children are now overweight or obese, up from about 5 percent in the early 1980s. The APA survey reveals that overweight kids are significantly more likely to worry about things than normal-weight kids. And they’re prone to self-soothing by eating or napping, while their normal-weight peers are more likely to work out stress with healthier options like exercise. It’s little wonder that nearly half of overweight kids say they experience headaches and sleep and eating problems.
At just 8 years old, Maya Hill of Forest Park, IL, feels the stresses not only of schoolwork but also of being overweight, says mom Sandra Hill, who works for a Chicago financial consulting firm. “If people tease her about her weight, I’ve told her to say something like ‘I don’t like you saying that. It hurts my feelings.’ A lot of times it works. Sometimes not.”
Even without performance anxiety or weight issues, preadolescence and adolescence can be innately stressful. “It’s a naive assumption that children don’t experience stress,” says Ken Ginsburg, MD, adolescent medicine specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of Building Resilience in Children and Teens. “We assume they’re happy and carefree because all they have to do is play, but children and adolescents have to figure out the answer to life’s most fundamental question: ‘Who am I?’ No matter how you paint it, that’s stressful.”
Signs of Trouble
Although kid stress is widespread, it isn’t always easy to recognize, especially as children get older. A little kid who’s overtired and stressed may whine or throw a temper tantrum. But older kids may withdraw, talk less and become irritable, changes that can easily be identified as normal adolescence. Parents need to be vigilant. “Don’t wait for your son or daughter to say, ‘Mom, I’m really stressed,’ because that’s probably never going to happen,” says Dr. Ginsburg. “Nearly every behavior that parents fear—drug use, eating disorders, bullying, even sex— is driven by stress, because kids reach for easy, quick fixes to manage their emotions.”
Look for these signs that your son or daughter is overwhelmed by stress:
• Increased irritability or anger
• Withdrawal—not talking, spending more time alone
• Physical ailments like headaches, stomachaches, fatigue or chest pain
• Behavior changes like a new group of friends, a new way of dressing, new habits
• Slipping school and activity performance
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