Children can get stressed for many reasons. Early childhood settings have an important role to play in alleviating children’s stress.
Firstly, a quality early childhood program provides children with:
- A balanced environment with vigorous and quiet activities,
- An engaging curriculum that addresses the needs of the individual children, and
- Qualified staff members that act in consistent and predictable ways.
Secondly, adults should interact with stressed children and help them develop coping skills. When a child is angry or upset, it is important for the educator to acknowledge the child’s feelings and to allow the child time to process the negative emotions. The child should not be asked to get going with daily activities without having worked through the stressful issues.
Educators need to say something that they think captures the child’s feelings. They need to get down to the child’s level, have eye to eye contact with the child and, for example, say: “I understand that you are upset because of ….”.
It is important to state what the issue could be especially if the child is not the verbal type. The educator should give the child time to calm down and then take one of two approaches: either ask the child to come up with the next step depending on the age and maturity of the child; or, suggest couple options that the child can do to overcome the stress.
Sometimes holding children gently helps them calm down; at other times, children need to be left alone while being supervised. They could read a book or listen to some music.
If children can verbalize feelings, they should be given the time to do so. The educator acknowledges the feelings and helps the child move to the next step on how to cope with the situation.
Thirdly, the educator can help children deal with their emotions by sharing children’s literature that focused on the same stressful issues. There are children’s books that cover the issues of loss and death, diverse families, fears, illness, and hospitalization.
There are many advantages to using children’s books. Children become aware of other children who are going through the same situation and how they navigated the associated stress. It is also useful for all children to learn about difficult life issues through children’s books even if they’re not going through it themselves so they will be equipped to cope when such time comes. In addition, the awareness of stressful issues though literature helps children develop empathy towards children going through tough times.
Fourthly, children can be encouraged to relax. Simple exercises could involve asking the children to tense each muscle then relax it. Another technique could be the use of imagery. For example, children could pretend they are leaves falling from a tree.
Lastly, role play and sociodramatic play offer valuable venues for children to express their feelings and relive their fears and anxieties in a healthy manner. Children often repeat the same scenarios until they are ready to overcome them.
The sooner children learn how to cope with stress, the more prepared they will be to navigate through complex issues as they grow up in a global world.
Reference:
Essa, E. L. (2014). Introduction to early childhood education (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
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