Social Emotional Learning Topic: Stress Management
/STRESS MANAGEMENT: 5 Key Lesson Takeaways
How to Recognize the Signs of Stress: interrupted sleep, not being able to calm down, irritability and overreacting, eating too much or not enough, increased blood pressure. Source
Managing Stress:
Take a moment to collect yourself: don’t have to solve everything right in the moment
Sometimes, it is more effective to take a step back from the conflict
Half an hour to a few hours to re-compose yourself together
Consider what you want to say in order to not use stressful chemicals that have been released into your body
Source for Managing Stress: (“Avoid, Alter, Adapt, & Accept”)
Different types of stress: productive stress, tolerable stress, toxic stress
Productive stress: motivates us. Examples: running a race or playing a game
Tolerable Stress: have a buffer-- someone to help you and assist with coping. Examples: illness of a loved one or an injury
Toxic Stress: the absence of protection or support. Examples: violent neighborhood or extreme poverty
Is Your Child An Orchid or a Dandelion?
Dandelion Children: resilient and will grow in any soil
can get along with many people
slow to recover, slow to warm up
usually able to cope with hardships
Orchid Children: highly reactive or sensitive
if given the right support, they can blossom and bloom
sensitive and much more vulnerable to stress
Stress Management Tools and Resources
Harvard University Center for the Developing Child
Headspace, also available for children
Conversations between parents and their children: 52 Essential Conversations by Jenny Woo
Book Recommendations:
Breathe Like a Bear: 30 Mindful Moments for Kids to Feel Calm and Focused Anytime, Anywhere
A beautifully illustrated collection of mindfulness exercises designed to teach kids (and adults) techniques for managing their bodies, breath, and emotions.
Hear one of the world’s leading child psychologists shatter the myth of “good parenting” and help us understand how to best support our children’s needs.
The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive
This is a book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, and child development experts coping with difficult children.
Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Stress Management with Kara
Jenny Woo: Today we're talking about stress management with Kara. Kara has been a High School History teacher for more than 10 years both domestically in the US and internationally in Israel. While getting her master's at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on developmental cognitive neuroscience, Kara has also researched adolescent development stress and mindfulness. Welcome.
Kara Mohler: Thank you for having me, Jenny. I'm happy to be here.
Jenny Woo: Tell us about stress management. How do we do that?
Kara Mohler: It's really hard but it's something that's critical for everyone to figure out for themselves, especially because when you are stressed, it bleeds over into other areas of your life. And if you're a parent that means that your kids are seeing that stress also.
Jenny Woo: Tell me a little bit more about recognizing that I'm stressed and how do I go about learning what is it that I need and what works for me.
Kara Mohler: Signs either in yourself or things that you might see in your children would be interrupted sleep, not being able to calm down, or being irritable and overreacting. It's definitely a huge sign of stress if you're snapping and reacting quickly to your kids or if you notice that your kids are really irritable. Another major sign of stress can be either eating too much or not eating enough, skipping meals that sort of thing is definitely a sign that maybe you're too stressed. The other physical markers that you see when you get stressed are increased blood pressure. Your heart pounding. Some people get anxiety dreams in the middle of the night and aren't quite sure. That might just be your body trying to tell you that you're stressed and in the body, what actually happens is that your cortisol levels go up when you're stressed, and too much cortisol over time really impedes your ability to recover quickly with toxic stress if that last for years and years.
Jenny Woo: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and as you're naming all these signs, I can't help but checking off a lot of those myself. And I hate to say this but, I personally as a parent feel really stressed, and I wonder how I manage my own stress and my children's stress. At times, I feel like I need to do my self-care, but I feel really selfish in doing that. What should I do?
Kara Mohler: Yeah, I bet that you and every other parent on the earth feel that way. I think that what you're doing with your cards is so great with your Essential Conversations cards because you've got lots of tips for parents. Remind parents that they can take a moment to collect themselves that they don't have to solve everything right in the moment. Sometimes it's even better to step back from conflict or not react right in the moment if you're upset with something that your child did, but it's OK to take a little while, to take half an hour, to take a few hours to get yourself together and really consider what you want to say so that you're not snapping and you're not using all of those stressful chemicals that have been released into your body to react.
Jenny Woo: It reminded me of research that I recently heard about something like it's actually better to reflect on something that you've done later on than in the moment because your body is calmer, and I can certainly think of plenty of times where I really was kind of mean to my children and to myself. In that moment, not just feeling mean but also feeling guilty of being mean. So that sort of snowball effect of negative emotion. It made me felt really bad like I needed to rectify it, but I didn't know how in the moment.
Kara Mohler: Right. Stepping back is really critical and also just being attuned to your kids. They are looking to you, they're looking to you for their own reactions and so attunement with how they're feeling but also recognizing that they're going to look at how you are reacting for cues about how they should be reacting to the situation. It's also really important to understand. If you're stressed and snapping, even if you're not stressed and snapping with them, but if you're in the car and you've got road rage or you know you're making dinner and you're angry about something in the house, your kids will pick that up.
Jenny Woo: I can't help but ask you this because you were on Jeopardy. You actually won. You did, so no need to be humble that that's quite an accomplishment. I can only imagine being physically standing on that and having that clicker in your head. That is an incredible moment of stress. How did you handle it? What works for you?
Kara Mohler: Thinking back to that moment, it was a while ago, that was almost 10 years ago. But when it did happen for sure I had the racing heart and the palms and everything. I think that what I did in the moment was take deep breaths. Use the adrenaline in the moment but then I remember that after the show was over going to the beach in Santa Monica and just calming down with my mom and having a nice meal, having a nice glass of wine to celebrate. Really taking the time to let that stress drift away because you can't be keyed up so much in that moment.
Jenny Woo: Yeah, and that actually reminds me of how this could tie into building resilience. Because there are good stress and bad stress. How do you distinguish that tension between the two? And how do you manage it in your students to give them high expectations, but to support them in an age-appropriate and maturity appropriate way?
Kara Mohler: Parents are the most important support system for their kids. But teachers play an important role. As kids get older, kids start to put more stress on their grades on themselves. It's important to understand what the different levels of stress are. There's productive stress, which thinks about running a race or playing a game, something that actually is good for you. A little bit of stress is fine. There's tolerable stress which basically means that you have a buffer that you have someone to help you cope with the stress and deal with it. And that's exactly where parents can come in. If your kid seems a little bit too overwhelmed, then having a parent to be that source of resilience and really to help the child support and to think through ideas and brainstorm what they could do for the problem is really important. The level that you were talking about toxic stress is really something to be concerned about because kids when they're between three and six, it's a sensitive period for the development of their brain. If they're stressed too often, those stress chemicals actually inhibit the growth of some areas of their brain. Parents have actually been shown in that case. Like, let's say a child lives in a violent neighborhood or a child lived somewhere where they're going to be dealing with stress all the time. Parents have been shown to be the factor that can actually ameliorate that stress and improve stress. But I also think that it's important to understand that kids are all different in their stress levels and something that comes from psychology is the idea of a child's temperament, which psychologists have actually said that you can tell this from when a baby is an infant based on crying times. It's something really interesting to look into. But there are kids who are resilient and in the literature, those kids have also been called "dandelion children" sometimes because they'll grow in any soil. It doesn't matter what area they're in, they basically can just get along with everyone they're Sunny sunshiny dandelion and they're really resilient. But there are slow to recover children, slow to warm up, and slow to recover where it takes them a little bit longer to get to know people. They're not super stressed but they're slow to warm up. Then there are children who are highly reactive or highly sensitive where there's lots of crying. Some people might call them difficult, but there's this really nice metaphor for kids like that calling them "Orchid Children," which means that they can be so beautiful, and you know if they're given the right support, they can really blossom and bloom. But they're also really sensitive so they're much more vulnerable to stress. And understanding where your child falls on the spectrum would be a really great idea for parents because you can probably leave the Dandelion child to their own devices a little bit more, and then that Orchid child you're going to need to make sure to support and nurture and really just give them more support for their stressors.
Jenny Woo: I love how you broke that down into different levels of need and in terms of stress. It's incredibly helpful. I mean I can think of so many different examples. For example, I have my three children and I can certainly point out who is the dandelion and who is the orchid.
Kara Mohler: In families, it happens all the time. One kid is an orchid and one kid is a dandelion and it's just...
Jenny Woo: Exactly. There were moments my husband and I were like "what's wrong with this child" or "what did we do wrong." But in fact, it's just who they are and if we could operate from a point of strength, recognizing what they need. I think that is so helpful. As a mom of three, there are certainly times where I would feel like I'm neglecting the dandelion. So, it's kind of like I'm not being fair to my children. But fairness is really everybody getting what they need on a very personal level. So, I love the example of the metaphor. Thank you so much.
Jenny Woo: Parting question: what are some additional tools, resources, information that we can find to learn more about stress management?
Kara Mohler: In terms of resources, I think that one really great place is the Center for the Developing Child. They have lots of information about stress. That's from Harvard University, but if you look them up, they've got really good videos that explain what's going on with a child and also the impact of stress. There are also many great apps for stress. You asked me what I do to destress, and I think that I didn't have all those coping mechanisms in place when I was on Jeopardy, but now for sure, I use mindfulness apps. I really like Headspace and they have it for kids. There are kid packs on Headspace and single packs that really make it developmentally friendly and there are lots of other free software that help your kids breathe and take a moment to consider what's happening to them in a moment of stress and understand their own emotions. I think that your cards will really help parents to have those conversations with their kids and to get great tips on what they're doing.
Jenny Woo: Thank you so much for so many great actionable tips. Thank you for listening to 52 Essential Conversation.