Stress is by no means an exclusively adult problem. Children can suffer from the effects of harmful stress every bit as much. In fact, stress is all the more difficult for children to handle because they are not yet in a position to think it through and isolate its sources to see how these affect them personally, in the way that adults can. Because children cannot be expected to help themselves in the same way as adults, they need and deserve plenty of guidance in stress management. Children from broken or unstable homes are more obvious candidates for stress related problems, but all children will experience strews in some form, more or less, as part of growing up. The transition from the security of the womb to the challenge of the world outside is the greatest and perhaps most stressful of all the life changes we share. The subsequent years of childhood, especially the years up to the age of 5, continue to be a time of enormous changes, which often follow each other in rapid succession.
This is when a child learns to walk, to talk, to feed him or herself, to relate to others within the close circle of the family and the wider context of school, to distinguish right from wrong, to assess possible sources of danger, and take the right action accordingly. It is a time of almost constant adjustment to new situations and given that stress is so closely linked to various forms change. It is easy to appreciate just how stressful life may seem to young children. Classic childhood stress symptoms may include a tendency to stammer, which most usually develops around the age of 4-5, when fluent speech is normally achieved, or a tendency to tell lies.
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