Children and Stress – How to Create a Low Stress Environment for Your Child

Children and Stress - How to Create a Low Stress Environment for Your Child

When you put a load on a piece of metal you stress it. That’s what the engineers call it. Stress. There’s actually a profession that deals only with understanding how much of a load any material can take. They’re called stress engineers.

And these folks know everything about what happens when you exert a lot of pressure on a lot of different materials.

I like to remember that when I feel stressed–there’s something unnatural about feeling like I’m about to break any minute, like I can’t take the pressure.

It’s my human nature crying out for some release from inhuman demands. It’s my body’s–and my spirit’s–response to an all too heavy load that I’m not made to support.

And becoming a father is stressful in many ways.

Knowing the early signs of stress and how to lessen our load, is hugely helpful to our children, not least in their early years. They’re constantly scanning their environment to know if it’s safe or not.

When we’re stressed, it tells our children there’s something to fear. Our stress quickly becomes theirs, and it affects how our children develop.

Our stress will affect our child’s behavior, which is always an appropriate response to his or her environment.

‘When things go wrong, don’t ask what’s wrong with the kid. Let’s look at the environment. Let’s look at what’s going on in the family, let’s look at what’s going on in the culture, let’s look at what’s going on in the community. And particularly, what’s going on in the child’s immediate relationships with the one that he or she is closest to. Which means to say we have to look at ourselves.’ –Gabor Maté

When you’re stressed, your child’s small body senses that there’s some unknown reason for her, too, to be on high alert. Her most trusted adult is wound up tight with apprehension.

The better you get at understanding your body’s response to overload–and how to lighten your load–the easier it will be for you to ease the pressures on your child as well.

That’s why one of the greatest gifts you can give your child is to deepen your understanding of your limits, and honor your true nature.

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You can learn to recognize the signs of stress.

The word ‘stress’ goes all the way back to the 14th century, and is partly rooted in the word ‘distress’.  When the life we lead is not the life we’re meant to lead, we become anxious, worried and immeasurably sad.

It is also related to the latin word for something that is tight, drawn together, compressed.

These are really hard feelings to be with, and most of us will do anything we can to get away from them. They’re just too uncomfortable, and we either numb out or lash out. Maybe you recognize some of these behaviors when you’re stressed:

  • You can’t stop eating sweets or starch
  • You’re not sleeping well
  • You’re constantly checking your Iphone, Ipad or Facebook page
  • Your back aches, your head hurts, your neck is sore
  • You’re irritated, angry, frustrated a lot
  • You have trouble concentrating and remembering

If some of these signs are familiar, chances are your body is responding to a perceived threat, something that drives you to flee, fight or freeze.

Your body releases a flood of stress hormones and you’re on high alert. Your heart pounds faster, your muscles tighten, your blood pressure rises and your breath quickens.

You’re all set to escape.

Being a father is full of stressfull pressures.

If we’ve never known stress before, we’ll most likely get a taste of it when we become fathers. It’s like we enter a new dimension where time is a rare commodity. Burnout consultants and stress managers (yes, those are sadly professions) know this as time stress.

The late Irish poet John O’Donoghue would agree to some extent.  Stress, he said, is a “perverted relationship with time. So that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim, and time has become routine. So at the end of the day, you probably haven’t had a true moment for yourself”.

This is not surprising if you’re in a two-parent family where you and your partner work full time. Financially, you’re better off. But in terms of time, it’s often a struggle to balance all your professional obligations with being a present father. And there’s hardly any time to turn inwards, to visit with yourself, and hear what is calling you.

There are many other reasons most men find fatherhood to be stressful. Your family budget may be tight, especially if you’re a single-earner family. Your child’s behavior may trigger emotional memories in you that you’d rather not face (more stress!). Your relationship with your spouse may be strained from lack of attention or understanding, and there’s a silent distance growing between the two of you. Or you’re physically and mentally depleted, but taking care of yourself is not your top priority.

Your stress troubles your child.

When there’s too much stress on our systems, we’re battling invisible forces. One one level we’re just late for work. On another level our whole existence is under threat.

It’s hard to stay present with our children when we’re fighting for our lives.

This is why stressed dads don’t pick up on the subtle cues of our children. We miss a lot of what they’re communicating, either in words, sounds or signs. We’re what Dr. Gabor Maté calls proximally separated. Physically close but emotionally far away.

Despite the best of our intentions, we inevitably transfer our emotional stress to our kids. Not because we aren’t doing our best, not because the we aren’t dedicated or devoted, but because we’re stressed.

Children develop in immediate response to their surroundings; their physiologies and psyches are shaped by their social environments. For instance, children who grow up in stressful homes are more likely to have asthma.

A father who lives at a breathless pace is more likely to have a child who finds it hard to breathe.

Far from all levels of stress has this kind of impact. There are obviously gradations to how stressful the home environment is to a child. Stress specialists use the terms positive, tolerable and toxic stress.

Toxic stress is relentless and deeply damaging to our children’s health. This is caused by neglect, exposure to violence, physically or emotionally abusive relationships. It’s a recurring stress in the absence of adult support. It needs to stop, or the child will suffer for life.

Tolerable stress is manageable for our children if they receive loving attention and reassurance from a trusted adult. Maybe the child is injured, experiences the death of a loved one, or faces a calamity like a natural disaster. With the right support, this kind of stress is tolerable, if difficult. The child recovers.

Positive stress is to be expected in our children’s lives. A visit to the doctors. A conflict with a friend. Their hearts race for a while before coming back to baseline. Learning to handle positive stress is an essential part of our children’s healthy development.

A radical way to handle your stress

Knowing that our stress impacts our children one way or another can be hard to hear, especially if our lives are marked by stress. What makes it easier to bear is that at any moment we can take greater responsability for how we relate to stress and what we pass on to our children.

You may have heard that meditation helps. Or exercise. Or eating well. Or getting enough sleep. These are all valuable ways of calming, grounding or strengthening ourselves. But from my own experiences of stress, I’ve learned it’s really hard to meditate when my body tells me to run. It’s hard to will myself to sleep better when my body is under attack and needs to say awake. It’s hard to feed on lettuce and lentils when my body is ready to stampede across a savannah.

Stress isn’t merely a call for yet another coping strategy to help us get by. It’s a call for a radical new stance towards what are essentially inhuman pressures on us and our families.

In his wonderful book Fire in the Belly, Sam Keen takes a poetic, rather than stoic, stance for a wholehearted masculine and a new form of heroism. He speaks of a man who doesn’t try to endure overload by engaging in fortifying practices of self-improvement.

What he envisions is a man who recognizes stress as a sign that we find ourselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

‘Beware the once-born psychological cheerleaders, the purveyors of one-minute solutions, who assure you that all you need to do is change your diet, manage your time more efficiently, exercise more, learn to relax on the job, adjust your priorities, communiate better, learn to enjoy stress, or think positively and avoid ‘negative’ emotions. Because stress is not simply a disease; it is a symptom that you are living somebody else’s life, marching to a drumbeat that doesn’t syncopate with your personal body rhythms, playing a role you didn’t create, living a script written by an alien authority.’

When I  burned out, a few years before becoming a father, it took me over a year to recover. It was a year that changed me to the core.

One of the things I learned is that our symptoms of stress can guide us towards our deeper needs and innate giftedness. Stress is a bundle of heart-sourced messages that hold a lot of wisdom for us, if we know how to listen. By kneeling down and leaning in, we learn to lovingly care for our own safety, and to accept our limitations and our profound need of others.

Soul-based stress relief.

‘There is a place in the soul — there is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch.’ –Meister Eckhardt

Rather than managing our stress with short-term tactics, we can approach ourselves with a gentle intention of understanding what we’re able to hold with grace. This is a routine of deep listening, acceptance and joyful curiosity. Here are some gifts we might discover along the way.

  • Rediscovering your natural baseline. 

We each have a natural rhythm at which we prefer to move, act, live. It’s different for each one of us. In the absence of overload, in a safe and peaceful environment, each of us settles in to an inborn beat. This is our baseline. Some of us are naturally ebullient. Others more prone to stillness. What is yours? Whatever it is, see to it that you can spend most of your days in baseline. Get really good at saying no to busy as a badge of self-worth. Say yes to swimming in a rollicking sea. Run barefoot through the autumnal woods. Dance naked to loud disco with your children. Or go for a solitary wander. Build relationship with the pace of your own heartbeat.

  • Celebrating your dependencies. 

Isolation is tremendously stressful. We’re professionally mobile. We may have little or no connection to place. Our families are spread across the globe, or nuclear. We struggle to belong. You can change this, by intentionally weaving more people back into your life and cracking the shell of outmoded heroic isolation. Revel in your dependency. Create a micro-tribe of people you’re drawn to. Surround your children with adults who share your values. Take time to build relationships and a rich social ecology that supports you and your family. Reach out, share your feelings and welcome support. You will be a lot happier, and far less stressed.

  • Giving freely from your heart. 

    Mainstream culture teaches us to work or act to receive income, position, title, promotion, accolade of some form or another. If we don’t get, we don’t give. It’s a conditioning that for most of us goes back to our early school days, if not before. Our behavior is conditioned by rewards that often do not meet our deeper needs. The radical stance is to give without expecting anything in return. Give your love, your time, your finest pair of trousers. Give from your heart, give with gratitude, and graciously overflow onto those you love. Follow your excitement, and find your own way to free yourself from external motivations for your natural generosity. When you do, when you help others without expectations, when you devote time to care for your child, your life is richer, and you’ll recover a lot faster from stressful situations.

  • Receiving guidance.

    Let stress be your teacher and see it as helpful. Don’t simply cope with or manage your stress response so you can get back in the saddle again to reclaim your efficiency. Try instead to listen to your body and ask yourself what it’s telling you. Your body is your most amazing guide. Get curious and allow it to teach you. When you turn towards your discomfort rather than manage it, your strategies for evasion will become more apparent. You will understand what in your life is causing you to suffer, and you will see more clearly what needs to change. The next time you are stressed, find a tree to lean against (even if it’s on a busy street in a crowded city). Stay there one breath after another.  Be with the unbearalbe discomfort and restlessness for as long as you can. One day your tension will yield to bird song, to the wind in the canopy, to the scent of warm soil. Instead of running away from the discomfort, you are now moving towards greater meaning in your life.

Stress is often our response as humans to conditions that are less than human.

We didn’t develop to be entrepreneurs in a capitalist environment. We didn’t develop to compete, profit and win over each other.

We developed to cooperate and be in wholehearted connection with ourselves, each other and nature. When we allow stress to guide us towards insight, we take another step towards our deepest needs and wants.

“Stress,” says Psychologist Kelly McGonigal, “gives us access to our hearts” 

And when we have greater access to our hearts, we’re more able to offer our children our wholehearted presence in a peaceful home where there’s an abundance of time for play and connection.

Here we learn to let go of “hurry up”, or “we don’t have time for that” or “we need to get going now”.

Instead we find ourselves saying “wow, look at that,” or “take your time honey” or “I’ll sit here with you until you’re done.”


About the Author: Miki Dedijer
Miki Dedijers primary vocation is being the father of two free-range, organic boys.  He is a community builder who also works as a life coach for fathers around the world through naturaldads.com, lectures, and runs outdoor workshops for fathers and their children. He is the founder of a local men’s group and a leader in training with the Mankind Project.
 
Miki lives with his wife on a farm on the west coast of Sweden, accompanied by a Norwegian Puffindog, a Norwegian Forest cat, a flock of Muscovy ducks, and Orpington chickens.
 
 
You can find out more about Miki through his website, naturaldads.comor on Facebook.

12 Comments

Karen Young

Nina this isn’t unusual at all. Eating and fidgeting are ways to self-soothe, and a headache can come from the tension in your body that comes wth stress. Anything you can do to protect yourself from stress is important, such as eating well, sleeping, exercise, mindfulness – these all protect the brain from the effects of stress.

Reply
Christine Heywood

How can you deal with stress that is caused by another person’s behaviour over which you have no control ?

Reply
Jenn

I was thinking the same thing! I have an autistic child who yells, interrupts nonstop so conversations are impossible, and st times she is violent. I love the article but not sure how to apply it to her.

Reply
Miki

Hey Jenn–I have little experience of autism, and can only share from what I know myself.

When we’re stressed, we’re facing an imminent threat or situation that calls for an immediate response. A child who yells, interrupts or is violent. You may want to look at my articles on emotion coaching and empathic responses on Hey Sigmund for some support in those moments when you’re struggling to keep it all together.

But I believe it’s in the calmer moments that we can gain a valuable perspective, and reflection, to create the conditions that help our child self-regulate better.

This asks that we can take a step back and parent the environment, not just the child. Providing consistency, daily rhythms, sufficient sleep, peaceful spaces, minimal screen exposure, healthy (low-sugar) and varied diets can all help in lowering stressful situations. You may likely have tried many of these already.

I’ve learned from a few children who were diagnosed as autistic, and when I’ve seen them in nature, their gifts shone. Studies show how regular nature connection helps autistic children find greater stillness and focus. Some time outdoors (or if it’s hard to access then even watching nature programs if that suits your child) may be helpful.

Warmest,
Miki

Reply
Clark frisbie

I’m to unstrung to comment at this time but I will say I feel like I just woke out of a coma. Thank you. I will read your book and learn to be a present father not a shell of me .

Reply
Miki

Hey Clark– I’m glad to hear you found a way to move towards greater awareness. It’s a journey. One step and then another. I’d love to hear if you find the ebook helpful. Blessings, Miki

Reply
StrangerfromOZ

The one minute fixers are so funny and frustrating. I like how you wrote something along the line of how can one sleep when one is ready to run.

It’s similar to when I suffered Hyperemesis Gravidarum, it’s when a pregant woman can’t stop vomitting up food and even water.

One day, I managed to get off the bathroom floor and commando crawl to my laptop. I googled it only to read I had to eat a small cracker upon waking – that didn’t work for months and I only ended up severley dehydrated. It was bad enough I wasn’t thinking clearly but I had some useless articles back then.

There was one article (we are going back 12 years) that suggested trying B6 supplements and that supported me enough to consume at least water. It went into the anxiety behind the condition and I was able to treat that instead of “here just eat a dry toast and everything will be OK”.

I’m glad your’s guides people to more deeply and profound meanings to their struggles. They are blessings in disguise to start loving themselves not through more productivity but by being present. It’s the bodies way of saving years of regret. I never once heard of someone wishing they spent more time at work but I’ve heard of much regret that they wish they spent more time with their families. Children dont care for luxury vacations, they want their parents around in PRESENT.

Reply
miki

So beautiful and true what you write. Dry toast is a great metaphor for all the quick and easy suggestions to alleviate our sufferings, and we so want them to work, but they so rarely do.

Stress has a thousand causes, and in my experience they all grow out of our discomfort with living in a culture created mostly for the machine and productivity. The remedy is rarely more strategy or tactics to manage or cope, and more often a deeper reminder of our fundamental need to belong.

It is, I agree, all about finding our individual paths to presence and listening to our bodies.

Thank you for sharing so fully!

Reply

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The more we treat anxiety as a problem, or as something to be avoided, the more we inadvertently turn them away from the safe, growthful, brave things that drive it. 

On the other hand, when we make space for anxiety, let it in, welcome it, be with it, the more we make way for them to recognise that anxiety isn’t something they need to avoid. They can feel anxious and do brave. 

As long as they are safe, let them know this. Let them see you believing them that this feels big, and believing in them, that they can handle the big. 

‘Yes this feels scary. Of course it does - you’re doing something important/ new/ hard. I know you can do this. How can I help you feel brave?’♥️
I’ve loved working with @sccrcentre over the last 10 years. They do profoundly important work with families - keeping connections, reducing clinflict, building relationships - and they do it so incredibly well. @sccrcentre thank you for everything you do, and for letting me be a part of it. I love what you do and what you stand for. Your work over the last decade has been life-changing for so many. I know the next decade will be even more so.♥️

In their words …
Posted @withregram • @sccrcentre Over the next fortnight, as we prepare to mark our 10th anniversary (28 March), we want to re-share the great partners we’ve worked with over the past decade. We start today with Karen Young of Hey Sigmund.

Back in 2021, when we were still struggling with covid and lockdowns, Karen spoke as part of our online conference on ‘Strengthening the relationship between you & your teen’. It was a great talk and I’m delighted that you can still listen to it via the link in the bio.

Karen also blogged about our work for the Hey Sigmund website in 2018. ‘How to Strengthen Your Relationship With Your Children and Teens by Understanding Their Unique Brain Chemistry (by SCCR)’, which is still available to read - see link in bio.

#conflictresolution #conflict #families #family #mediation #earlyintervention #decade #anniversary #digital #scotland #scottish #cyrenians #psychology #relationships #children #teens #brain #brainchemistry #neuroscience
I often go into schools to talk to kids and teens about anxiety and big feelings. 

I always ask, ‘Who’s tried breathing through big feels and thinks it’s a load of rubbish?’ Most of them put their hand up. I put my hand up too, ‘Me too,’ I tell them, ‘I used to think the same as you. But now I know why it didn’t work, and what I needed to do to give me this powerful tool (and it’s so powerful!) that can calm anxiety, anger - all big feelings.’

The thing is though, all powertools need a little instruction and practice to use them well. Breathing is no different. Even though we’ve been breathing since we were born, we haven’t been strong breathing through big feelings. 

When the ‘feeling brain’ is upset, it drives short shallow breathing. This is instinctive. In the same ways we have to teach our bodies how to walk, ride a bike, talk, we also have to teach our brains how to breathe during big feelings. We do this by practising slow, strong breathing when we’re calm. 

We also have to make the ‘why’ clear. I talk about the ‘why’ for strong breathing in Hey Warrior, Dear You Love From Your Brain, and Ups and Downs. Our kids are hungry for the science, and they deserve the information that will make this all make sense. Breathing is like a lullaby for the amygdala - but only when it’s practised lots during calm.♥️
When it’s time to do brave, we can’t always be beside them, and we don’t need to be. What we can do is see them and help them feel us holding on, even in absence, while we also believe in their brave.♥️
Honestly isn’t this the way it is for all of us though?♥️

#childanxiety #parenting #separationanxiety

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