In the first part of this two-part article, we discussed, from my viewpoint as career educator of more than 30 years, the fact that preschools and families are increasing stress on preschool children. To clarify, we worked through a brief definition of preschool stress, and looked at the underlying reason for preschool stress.

Finally, we considered the basic requirement of preschool stress relief. We pick up at that point.

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Many years ago, children from birth to four or five years of age exercised natural preschool stress relief. Training in preschool stress relief was both unknown and unnecessary. Stay at home mothers never worried about trying to increase self-concept in their preschool children. They did not work to instill artificial coping skills and specialized anger management skills in pre-schoolers. Common sense dictated preschool stress relief efforts.

In the twenty-first century, however, many who themselves mismanage stress are seeking stress relief techniques for a preschool child or children. I have been appalled, both as teacher and principal, to see the negative, detrimental changes since I began my career. While we struggle to instill greater measures of preschool stress relief, we actually increase stress on young children.

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To a parent all they see is their toddler playing all day, when he is really working hard so his life isn’t at all stress free. It takes a lot to learn how to walk, talk, climb and other milestones that your child is ready to reach. He is pushing his limits beyond his physical strength and for learning mentally. Every day he will hurt himself as he is learning, often falling down and bumping himself, which comes as a surprise. Your toddler will keep trying until he gets frustated and angry when he fails as he is not able to balance him to take the falls or know when to stop trying. He will soon get exhausted by the end of it all.

When your toddler is involved in his favourite routine task or activity, he will get overtired and need to sleep to restore his energy. As excitement and tension build up so he will reach a point where he is physically exhausted, and not know when to stop. As it gets towards evening and your child has had a physically active day, you will want to help him make wind down to a quiet, peaceful and tranquil night. Quiet activities will ease him to a more relaxed state after his dinner time. You could get him to colour some pictures, or read books, watch a quiet video, sing some lullabies or some quiet play at his bath time. Your child will start to relax, ready for his bedtime routine. Once your child gets used to these daily activities, he can then associate them with activities that are done before bedtime. He will look forward to a comforting night and knows when it is time for bed soon enough..

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STRESS FREE MANAGING OF STRESSED CHILDREN & TEENAGERS IN PARENTING

Parents’ child related stress extends to coping with children’s. Child stress is very common.

Pregnancy rates high on the official stress-scale and mothers sometimes suffer also ‘baby blues’. But, also, parents have to be alert to child stress symptoms and cope with their children’s stress –as well as to avoid becoming stressful themselves in doing so. This is common in parenting.

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