What parents can do to ease their preschoolers' stress

Text Emilyn Tan

What to do?
To help preschoolers develop a range of coping strategies, mums and dads can focus on:

• Awareness of feelings
Explore the various emotions, one at a time. In a role-playing situation, suggest he show anger. Say, for instance, “Make an angry face. Stomp about with angry movements!”

And while he gets into the act, point out how the mind, body and emotions always work together. Next, repeat the exercise for an opposite emotion such as happiness. Don’t forget to sing the song 'If You’re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands'.

"To do a thorough job, the children should notice how their angry thoughts and emotions create body tension," says Lowenstein. "Let the children understand that it is impossible to have angry thoughts and a happy body or feelings."

They should also pay attention to the fact that they are in control of managing all these elements!

"By playing with the spectrum of emotions in this way, children can become aware of their internal body signals, telling them which emotion is in place at any given time,” Lowenstein notes. “It is much harder to lose control when an internal reference point is in place."

• Releasing tension
Begin to teach your child to calm down by showing the difference between tension and relaxation with two simple props like a rock and a sock.

Place a rock in one of the child’s hands, a sock in the other. Model the exercise as you explain how to tighten body parts to make them "hard like the rock". Next, take a deep breath and relax your body to make the various parts "soft like the sock".

"Start with the face, tensing and then relaxing, and progress all the way down to the feet, one body part at a time,"suggests Lowenstein. "Be sure to use the words 'tight', 'hard' and 'tense', referring to the rock, and 'soft', 'calm' and 'relaxed', referring to the sock.”

Drawing conclusions
Art can also help to promote awareness and expression of various feelings, including stress. Given instructions and the opportunity to do so, most preschoolers will begin to draw spontaneously with crayons or colour pencils and paper.

"The artwork of an angry child will present quite a contrast to that of a child who is feeling content," Lowenstein observes.

Their artwork can later – and progressively, over some time – be placed on a wall or the refrigerator door to reinforce the labeling and understanding of their emotions. Encourage them to talk about these openly.

Most importantly, continue to provide a supportive home environment as you help your child learn about stress and develop a range of coping strategies.

Experts from the American Psychological Association, writing at www.apahelpcenter.org, advise, "Use your family like a security blanket for your children: wrap them up in family closeness and make sure your children have lots of family time. During times of stress and change, spend more time with your children playing games, reading to them, or just holding them close.

"Young children especially crave routine and rituals. If bedtime is the time you read stories to your children, make sure you keep that time for stories. Your child may be less able to handle change when he or she is going through a particularly rough time."

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