How To Help Your Child Cope With Stress

With the economy turning south, more families are facing difficult and challenging times. Because children can easily absorb their parents' emotional signals, they are often under undue stress. It is one thing to deal with personal anxiety; it is another to help your child confront his own demons. With the right attitude and tools, however,helping your child manage stress is not only possible but rewarding.

For one thing, difficult times build character; like gym workouts that strengthen muscles, stress in and of itself is often a great catalyst for resilience and growth. The key is not to avoid the challenge, but to embrace it as one of the inevitable lessons of life. To this end, having a genuine discussion with your child about his demons is one of the best things you can do.

Identify his fears

In a safe and well-structured setting, allow the child to reveal what is really bothering him. Is it his fear of losing the home, the family, mom, dad? The old familiar patterns? Encourage your child to verbalize specifically what it is that scares him? What can he not do without? Then suggest gently that every vacuum that develops gets filled, sometimes with something lost, often with something new. Change is an inevitable part of life; without it, we would not have moved the way we did into the 21st century. Change is something we need to embrace, not fear.

Identify ways he can dismantle his fears

Fears are phantoms, creations of our minds. They feed on our vulnerability, our reluctance to acknowledge even to ourselves that there are other avenues besides the old, well-worn paths. What if the worst case scenario happens? What if....? Elaborating on possibilities eliminates their probability because demons are strengthened by silence.

Talking about eventualities in a safe, open environment kills the power of phantoms. Allow your child to understand what fears are--phantoms not of what is, but what might happen. As such, they are as frightening as hot air.

Look for positive ways to fill the vacuum

Denuded, the fear phantom is pure emptiness. Now, you can help your child fill the vacuum with something positive, warm and fuzzy, real as the family dog. Take him to the park, the zoo or spend an afternoon working on a creative project.

Nothing fills the vacuum more than images from the heart. Newly learned experiences need to be anchored with body work, finger work, mind work. Allow the contours of new responses to spiral through each cell, each neuron, creating new circuitry in the brain that gets stronger with each repetition.

Helping a child cope with stress is a life event; it needs to be ongoing, part of the rhythm of a child's life. All you are doing is showing him what options are available to him when stress happens. As we all know, life happens , but it gets so much easier with a good toolbox.