Traditionally, childhood is a time of carefree summers spent with best friends, trips to amusement parks and Saturday matinees at the movies. But for many children, it’s also a time of great stress. In fact, stress—those overwhelming feelings of doubt about ourselves or our ability to handle things—is as common in children as adults. The greatest challenge to parents today is teaching children to manage stress effectively.

Children may react to excess stress with behavior that seems immature, inappropriate, or even disturbing. Stress can be terrifying to children who lack the emotional maturity or experience to understand and deal with it. The challenge for parents, teachers, and other caretakers include how to recognize signs of stress in children of different ages, how to know when stress threatens to overwhelm a child, and what to do about it.

A stressed-out condition can result from a specific cause or from life in general. Here are some examples:

* Jen: At 17, Jen was a high school senior expecting to graduate with honors in the Spring. Just before Christmas, however, Jen’s father lost his job and the family had to move into the basement of a cousin’s house. Jen soon developed a severe allergy, then asthma. The illness cost her so much time from school that she required home-schooling to make up the difference.
* Mark: Mark was only two when his parents divorced. Confused, Mark wandered the house, calling plaintively for his father but weekends with Dad made him cry. Most weekends, Mark developed upset stomachs that were so bad he’d miss preschool on Mondays.
* Miranda: When her brother was born, four-year-old Miranda started sucking her thumb. This behavior continued for a year. As the baby grew, Miranda’s behavior became aggressive to the point that she would yank the pacifier from his mouth. She’d then put the pacifier in her own mouth while her brother cried.

Age-Related Stresses

Toddlers need to feel safe and comfortable. Stress for preschool children can arise from a new face at home or at day care, the disappearance of a familiar face, visiting lots of new places at once, or abrupt changes in the family’s structure, relationships or daily routine.

During the grade-school years, children become concerned with pleasing people like teachers, parents, guardians and coaches. School life—even a change in assigned seating or having to take a test—brings higher levels of stress every year. And when it comes to peers, even the threat of diminished acceptance is terrifying. Sleep-overs, birthday parties, sporting events and music competitions can trigger stressful reactions.

Through middle school and beyond, the pressures kids feel from parents, teachers, peers, society at large, and from within increases. Children have to learn adapt to these pressures. Because they have grown in their intelligence, curiosity and knowledge of community, demands for their attention, time, energy and effort can often feel like a tug of war. As in the cases of Mark and Jen, it is not unusual for life-altering events to express themselves in illness. At the University of Missouri, for instance, found that a child’s risk of upper-respiratory infection increases by 200 percent for the seven days following a high-stress event. And parents like Miranda’s might confuse what they believe are normal behavior with an expression of anxiety. Children often display their tensions in small acts that have aggressive undertones.

How You Can Help

There are many ways parents can help their children deal with stress and stressful situations.

* One way to help stress and anxiety is to include certain stress- and anxiety-reducing foods in your diet. B vitamins are important to keep you healthy during times of stress and anxiety. Taking in enough B vitamins will help ensure that you do not become more stressed due to the development of a stress-induced illness. Also, having a deficiency in vitamin B-12 can cause depression and irritability, according to "American Family Physician." Depression and irritability can make it harder to deal with stress. Eat animal-based meats that are high in vitamin B12 or cereals that have been enriched with B12, or take a supplement to ensure you get enough B12. Also, foods such as broccoli, almonds and milk will provide you with rich sources of B vitamins.

* Don’t try to fix everything for the child, and avoid offering advice. Sometimes just listening so that your child feels truly heard may be enough to relieve the stress.

* As you listen, ask questions that encourage your child to think a situation through. “What’s the next step?” or “How would you handle that?” are good questions. Ask a lot of “what-if” questions, too.

* Help children listen to themselves. Quiet-time techniques for children to listen to nature sounds like rain or waves upon the beach, to their own heartbeat, or to recordings of whales, dolphins or birds.

* Encourage children to spend time listening to their thoughts. When they feel free to speak their own thoughts aloud about a situation, things suddenly become clear.

* Breathing exercise for kids and parents. Shallow breathing is associated with the production of cortisol, the stress hormone. Deeper, effective breathing produces feelings of relaxation and calm.

* Use soothing and rhythmic music, even simple drumming, to help your child relieve muscle tension. It works!

* Don’t overlook exercise for releasing stress and tension. It works for your child just as it does for you. Have children walk the dog, get on the treadmill or stretch. Any movement they enjoy will help ease stress away.

Parents can do much to alleviate stress in their children’s lives. Effectively dealing with your own stress is the first step. Showing your kids how to release their stress comes next.