Our LAST Chapter Entry!

Sharon Vang is the author of our very last chapter entry, and this is a picture of her and her sister in their backyard when she was little. She said, "That’s me on the right. She’s older and taller than me in the picture, but I am now taller than her."

I think you'll agree with me that Sharon has written a great entry to finish things up for us. Enjoy.

She wrote:
In Chapter 10, Elkind examines how children perceive hurrying and how the results can create stress. Depending on their level of mental development, Elkind believes that children deal with hurrying in different ways and that hurrying can affect children in negative ways. It is up to adults and parents to decipher how to make it less stressful for children. The way to do this is to view the world through the eyes of our hurried children. Only then can we can begin to help children understand that hurrying is not our way of rejecting or applying stress on them.

I can definitely relate to Elkind’s thoughts on the different ways that children can perceive hurrying. As a child, my parents always pushed me to do well in school. They expected the best out of me and it was quite frustrating at times. I felt as though they didn’t understand the stress that I was going through. I had to earn good grades, do my chores and help my brothers with their homework too. It was a tall task. Even though I did well in school, it never seemed to be good enough for them. All the while, they would never complain or make such comments about my brothers’ grades. I felt as though they didn’t appreciate or love me for who I was. For the things I did to please them, it never seemed to be enough. I felt a sense of rejection. It was as though I had given everything and got nothing back in return. It wasn’t until I asked my parents why they treated me like they did that they told me they did so because they had faith that I could succeed in anything I put my mind to. It was then that I began to realize why they did the things they did. I still wasn’t too happy about the stress they put me through, but I was more understanding of the reasons why they acted as they did. After apologizing to me about the whole situation, my mother commented that she wished she had put herself in my shoes so she could have prevented herself from putting me through such stress. My parents became more understanding about my education and since then, they have supported me in everything I’ve chosen to do in my life.

Elkind also expresses his feelings about the importance of having a childhood experience filled with pleasures, and that we learn from children’s experiences caused by hurrying. I agree with Elkind in that children have a right to enjoy the pleasures of being a child. They should be able to experience the unconditional love of their parents and the adoration of others. Childhood is an experience that only comes around once during a lifetime, so it is important that both children and adults take the time to experience its value. There are ups and downs and there are lessons to be learned from hurrying children. But it’s most important that children and adults learn from their failures so they can appreciate the value of the experiences that come with childhood.

Another Chapter 10 Entry: Help Your Children Before it is Too Late!

This is Lauren Burner, the author of this entry, between her two sisters, Sarah and Katelyn.
She explained,
"This is a picture of the ritual I described in my blog entry of reading a book every night as a family. Check out those fancy dresses and my
bowl hair cut. I am not sure what is going on with my older sister and
that face she gave,but I swear she is not as evil now as she looked in that picture. Haha!" Sarah might not appreciate that Lauren has made this picture of her public, but I'm sure she'd appreciate what Lauren has written -- and I think you will, too.

She wrote:

After reading Elkind’s chapter on the ways to reduce stress in children, I couldn’t help but relate these concepts to my own personal life. I came from a divorced household and my mother was a single parent without the help from my father. We relied heavily on my grandparents for support in raising my sisters and me. Although we spent a majority of our time with our grandparents, we were still placed in day care at an early age and spent most of our days away from our mother. When my mom would drop us off at school, she would always say, “I love you and I am going to miss you little munchkins.” She always made us aware that she did not want to leave us. She called us munchkins from the day we were born, but as I personally grew into my teenage years, my name was quickly changed to a monster.

Elkind suggests that parents need to be the prime example for children. Children in their early years tend to think more egocentrically and believe that everything is centered on them. When parents start to experience levels of stress, it is reflected upon the family and the child will start to feel those emotions associated with stress. My mom had a lot of stress when it came to being a single parent of three daughters. She had stress relating to finances, occupations, family, home related instances and education. She constantly worried about our futures and how they would reflect our childhood. Honestly, I can never remember a circumstance where I could feel my mother’s stress because she always dealt with it independently. She would sacrifice her own feelings for the sake of her children’s best interest (like any mother would!).

One thing I really cherished looking back on my childhood is that simple matter that my mother let us be children. My mother relied on us for many things when we got into our teenage years, but as children she wanted us to have the so-called “normal” childhood. We spent a massive amount of time with my grandparents, which was not normal to many of my friends. I did not spend time with my father because he gave sole custody of my older sister and me to my mom. After she divorced my dad, she married my step- father and had my little sister, Katelyn (she is the brown haired munchkin, who TRULY is the monster of the family---yet the baby as well!). We had that picture perfect image, but things inside the marriage and family were not perfect. My mom and step-father were divorced and once again my mother had to find a way to make ends meet for her family.

I have always valued the way that my grandparents and my mother have talked to us. Even as children they would explain circumstances in a way that we could understand and evaluate. They did not treat us like adults or try to mature us in any way to grow up and start dealing with the problems of life. They equally took on the role of allowing us to remain children and continue with our lives. Everyone treated us with the respect a child deserves. We were asked to do chores around the house, but were never asked without thank you or please attached to it. According to Elkind, saying thank you and please in regards to something you want a child to do allows that child to realize that they are not being told what to do but rather asked.

I found this chapter very interesting because it talked about how our society has been so rushed in terms of time in our daily schedules. Our society is so fascinated and obsessed with time that they forget to take time out for their children. Parents are so fixated on their personal lives in association with work, finances and household concerns, that they forget to take time for their children and check in with them every once in a while. My mother worked 50-hour weeks but when she would come to my grandparent’s house to pick us up, she would always make time for us and ask us how school was. We had many rituals in my family. One of the most important was when my family would sit on the couch and read a book before we got ready for bed. After the book my mother, or whoever was reading the book to us, would ask us questions about the book. This was her way of allowing us to speak our mind and treasure our time.

This idea of time and hurrying makes me think about a quote that my grandpa always said while we were growing up. “Life is not measured by the years in life; rather it is measured by the life in your years.” This quote should be valued more by our society and taught to our children more. They should continually be encouraged to play and enjoy their years and not stress over the little things that life throws their way. Parents can definitely lessen the stress that children are feeling and they can also encourage their children to be open and honest with them. These techniques will alleviate the stress placed on children and hopefully prevent the hurrying that children are experiencing in today’s society.

Our First Entry on Our LAST Chapter: Helping Hurried Children

This is Aglaed Garcia, who wrote our first entry for chapter 10. Of the picture, she said,

"Apparently, I am blowing a kiss and trying to look sexy for the picture." I think you'll enjoy her entry on Elkind's final chapter.

She wrote:

In this chapter, Elkind talked about helping hurried children. He mentions that in order to help children we first need to recognize what we cannot do. “We cannot change the basic thrust of American society, for which hurrying is the accepted and valued way of life” (p.205). We also need to be able to understand children. If we cannot understand them, then we cannot help them. Instead of helping them we push them to a limit and that causes unnecessary pressure. They feel like miniature adults because they are dealing with multiple stressors.

Elkind mentions two types of contractual violation and exploitation. One is called calendar hurrying and the other one is called clock hurrying. Calendar hurrying is when we expect children to perform beyond their capabilities to make decisions. A good example of calendar hurrying is when children feel pressured by their parents to perform beyond their understanding. This reminds me when I was working with first graders in an after-school program. When I first started working with the students, I was very amazed at how advanced the students were academically. They were only in first grade and they were already learning how to add and subtract big numbers. Their vocabulary words were very advanced because some students were able to read words like wonderful, friendship, summer, and swimming. In my opinion, all the students were very bright and smart. They all had unique skills and abilities. However, according to their teacher, some of the students were behind academically. The students that were behind were pressured to perform beyond their understanding. They had extra homework assignments and sometimes were not able to play outside with their peers because they needed to complete their homework first. The students were overwhelmed and felt unhappy in school with class activities. They felt unsure and unable to perform well on certain tasks. Children at this age should not feel devastated and overwhelmed because of school. They should feel confident to explore and not be afraid to make mistakes when learning new tasks.

Clock hurrying is another type of violation and exploitation. Clock hurrying happens when we demand that children perform a task in a short period of time. It pressures them to use all their energy and finish fast. In the end they feel overwhelmed and exhausted. This reminds me of Susan, a five year old girl in the after-school program. One day, one of my students was crying because she was struggling with her homework. Since we only have 30 minutes to work on the homework, she was not able to finish on time and was devastated. She told me that her mom was going to be very angry at her for not finishing her homework. I talked to her and told her she was going to be fine, and not to worry because her mother was going to understand. However, she was still upset, and told me, “My mommy and teacher are going to be very angry at me, and they are not going to love me anymore.” She was very upset and worried about her mother’s reaction. I wanted to help and give her more time to finish her homework, but it was against the school policy. The students only had 30 minutes to work on homework. After homework I was assigned to do math and reading activities with them. Most of the parents expected that their children would be able to finish their homework in the afterschool program. Therefore, the majority of the students felt pressure to complete their homework before they went home. The problem was that they only had 30 minutes to work on homework, and some of the students are not able to complete their homework on time. Another problem was that some students rushed to finish and they ended up doing their homework wrong.

In the chapter, Elkind said that in order to help children and not make the mistake of hurrying them, we need to lower our demands and increase our support. If we are able to recognize our mistakes when working with children, we will be able to help them instead of creating stressors for them. Children have their unique skills and abilities. We just need to help them discover them.

Final Chapter 9 Entry

Annette Cipolla is the author of our final entry on chapter 9. She was able to relate Elkind's ideas to the lives of her children, and I think you'll appreciate her insight.

She wrote:
In chapter 9, Elkind addresses ways that children react to stress. Children feel stress from daily life that shows up as behaviors such as irritability and restlessness or general unhappiness and withdrawal. A Freudian term Elkind used that is new to me is free-floating anxiety, which he says derives from “simply not knowing what to be afraid of” (p. 187). It is commonly found in children who have parents that are separated or switch between many caregivers. I think their anxiety is caused by children feeling instability in their lives. They may not be afraid of anything in particular or even be able to explain what is wrong, but they definitely feel the stress of not knowing what’s going to happen next. I agree with Elkind that it is the separation from parents that is the most stressful for children. I offer my own children as an example.

I have three sons, who were ages 6, 7, and 12 at the time our family got divorced. They are now 16, 17, and 22. As a parent I thought I was relieving the stress on my children because they were living in a home with constant fighting. In reality it did not happen that way. While our home did become calmer, my children began to feel the stress of separation. Their lives became very unstable because their father began to work out of town a lot with the result being an inconsistent relationship between children and father. Over the years, my youngest has gone from having outbursts over his dad not showing up, to being apathetic and refusing to see him. My middle son would stare out the window, crying; at the time, he said he was wishing for his dad to come home. He has never expressed that he wanted us together nor has he placed blame on anyone. However, he has suffered from depression and, I believe in part, it is because he internalized all the anxiety he felt from missing his father. My oldest seemed to handle it quite well; although, as an adult, I see that he is living the same rushed life as his father and is constantly stressed.

This reminds me of a comparison Elkind made about burnout. He compared the symptoms of job burnout that adults feel to the symptoms of school burnout that children feel. Burnout is something I have witnessed and experienced and I do feel that it is prevalent in today’s school system. Learning is an insatiable joy for most children when they are very young and learn out of curiosity. Therefore, they are excited about going to school and learning new things. The anticipate the novelty of school experiences, but soon the demands of getting the answers correct and the overwhelming workload lead to stress. As we have discussed in class, children get homework in kindergarten and are given tests with grades. Imagine how a five year old feels when she is told she failed a spelling test or does not read well enough to go on to first grade with all the new friends she made. I would think that the loss of self confidence would be significant. Isn’t that too high a price for children to pay just because our society is in a hurry for them to learn? Not to mention, if children feel like failures in elementary school, how will they have confidence to get through junior high and high school? The chronic stress of always trying to keep up and do well can be overwhelming, and as Elkind says, can lead to learned helplessness that can possibly affect them for the rest of their lives.

One thing in chapter 9 that was particularly interesting to me is the studies that were done on children to test for Type A and Type B personality traits. Surprisingly, children’s personality traits didn’t correlate as much with their parents’ type as much as it did to how they were treated. Children with Type A personalities were more likely to have parents that pushed them to do well in addition to being more critical of their children's performance regardless of their own personality type. Children with Type B personalities received more praise and patience. This is an important concept for parents to realize. If parents offer praise, patience, and encouragement they will make it easier for children to deal with the stresses they experience.

In some cases, though, children are capable of coping with stress quite well on their own. This was Elkind’s last thought in the chapter. It is an intriguing fact that some children in extremely stressful environments use it as a motivator to accomplish their goals. Researchers have found that these children have these five qualities in common: social competence, impression management, self-confidence, independence, and achievement. I think that children with these abilities that lack support from home have similar temperaments that enable them to cope. It is my opinion that children who are highly sociable would fall into a category of having those five qualities. As a final thought, I think society as a whole would benefit if children and adults were taught coping skills to deal with the enormous stresses of living in a rushed society. Stress is unavoidable. Unfortunately, many adults lack the ability to deal with their own stresses which contributes to the growing stresses placed upon children.

Rena's Chapter 9 Entry

This is Rena Fields, our latest author, and her little sister, Sheena. Reena and Sheena. Gotta love the sound of that. And I think you'll love reading Rena's thoughts on chapter 9, too.

She wrote:

This chapter is all about how children react to stress and the different factors that could possibly cause them to react that way. What I found interesting is that it seems that more and more children are experiencing stress that is usually seen in adults which goes to re-iterate the concept and title of this book.

In the first part of this chapter the author talks about children experiencing chronic stress. This type of stress varies and is not specifically attached to a certain fear or anxiety. I was a bit shocked to see that the majority of this type of stress was mostly seen in separated or divorced households. I was a child of a divorce and only lived with one parent for the majority of my life. What also shocked me were the examples of trends that would differentiate a single parent household from a two-parent household. I can see why some of the examples would be common in some single parent households, such as having a record of being tardy or absent. This can be understandable if one parent has multiple kids to get out of the house and drop off at various locations; it is hard and can even be more difficult when one of them doesn’t want to listen. I just feel that my mom had to work even harder to not stick out even though we already did because we were the only family with one parent in most of my classes. Some of the other examples of single parent trends included going to the health clinic more and more behavior problems. I don’t understand the part about the health clinic. On the other hand, behavior problems are something that my little sister went through, but it was more because of her disabilities -- or that’s what they thought --than the divorce.

The next part of the chapter was on Type A behavior which is a personality pattern that categorizes how people handle stress and stressors. I assumed that it was for adults and their type of behavior, but according to this part of the chapter, children can have a Type A or Type B personality that is similar to adults. According to a study done on 378 children by Dr. Gerald Berenson and Louisiana State University, children who have a Type A personality can have some of the same health problems as adults with Type A personalities. The study showed that children had higher amounts of cholesterol in their blood stream than the children with Type B personalities. As an adult this can lead to other health problems such as migraine headaches, heart disease, and hypertension. Personally, I think that this is scary for children, and they shouldn’t already be experiencing health problems due to stress at such an early age.

I feel that the next section of this chapter on school burnout is something that we can all relate to, especially because the majority of us are graduating this semester. We all know what it’s like to go to school for thirteen years and then continue our education for another four to six. According to Elkind, children are feeling the same way as we are feeling as college students, which seems crazy to me, but understandable. As we all know, children are subject to a lot more testing and are pressured to perform well in school, while their parents have them signed up for five different extra curricular activities. Some parents do this to try and keep their children out of trouble and involved, but what it is doing is stressing them out. As a result, they are doing poorly in school or will even go to the measure of cheating because they are pressured to have the best of the best grades. It can be too much for us as adults. I can imagine it is even worse for children because if they don’t do well, they can get held back, whereas we can just take the class over again.

Lastly, we have all experienced some type of helplessness when we have been put in situations that are beyond our control and there is nothing we can do to fix it. Children are put in that same situation everyday that they go to school. They are told and forced to complete a task that they either never learned or don’t feel comfortable doing. Then, they find a way to get out of an activity or discussion because they don’t know what they are doing. The one thing that I can think of in relation to us as college students is where we sit in the classroom. There are a lot of students who prefer to sit in the back of the classroom because they do not like being called on or asked to participate. As a result their learned helplessness is to always look for a seat in the back so that they can avoid participating.

Overall and as stated above, these items seem to be a discussion that adults would be having with other adults, except this book is about children so we know it is something that children are experiencing. Stress comes in different forms and hopefully we can get this somewhat under control before our children have some serious health concerns.

Our Third Entry on Chapter 9

Jessica Nunez wrote our latest entry on chapter 9. Enjoy!

She wrote:

In Chapter 9, Elkind describes the various ways children respond to stress and the factors that may contribute to it. The factors that contribute to the way children react to stress are the amount of stress that is put upon them, their outlook on the stress situation they are in, and the different coping methods available to them. Due to these factors, the way a child deals with stress is completely unpredictable. I think that he is correct with believing children deal with stress in different ways. I have witnessed some children who fall apart when under stress, and other children who rise above their stress like an adult would. Children who rise above their stress could be growing up too fast. They should not even be stressing at such a young age.

The next thing Elkind addresses is Free-Floating Anxiety, which is unexplained fear that causes the child to feel restless, irritated, and unable to concentrate. Free-Floating Anxiety is considered to be a common response to separation and divorce. This type of stress affects the child's school behavior as well. A study showed that children from one-parent homes had lower attendance and achievement compared to children from two-parent homes. I do believe that divorce causes children’s school performance to decrease. They might be worried about issues at home rather than the lesson they should be learning in the classroom. In reality, school should be the main focus in a child's life.

Sometimes I feel like all the stress I am undergoing is due to problems that may be occurring at home. However, unrelieved stress in adults may be the result of what is known as job burnout. Job burnout occurs when someone grows tired of the same routine every day. Children undergo the same thing but it is called school burnout. In the study of job burnout, there were five stages identified as the honeymoon, fuel shortage, chronic symptoms, crisis and hitting the wall. All of these stages are about the same for school burnout. The school burnout may be caused by the child being dissatisfied with school, causing them to lose interest in it. The end result of that lost interest will be accomplishing less in school.

In order to respond to stress in a positive way, one of the following five qualities must be present. The first one is social competence. Young people seem to be relaxed when they around their peers. The second one is impression management. This is how the young person presents himself in public. Self-confidence is important when dealing with stress because they need to have faith they could make it through their situation. Another quality that affects the way a child reacts to stress is independence. When they can think for themselves, it shows that they are not affected by other people's opinions. The last quality to affect stress in a positive way is achievement. When a child focuses on a certain task rather than their stress, it gives them the opportunity to feel accomplished. I know from experience that these qualities do help us respond to stress in a positive way. One example is that, when I am around my family and friends, all my problems seem to be lifted just by their company. I think that all of these qualities would really help turn children’s daily stress into something positive, and enable them to live a less stressful life.

Another Entry on Chapter 9

Our latest author, Melissa Kyhn, had this to say about her photo: "The picture was taken when I was 2 and my brother was 4. It is one of
the many pictures that my Oma and Opa had taken of us when we were
younger. As you can see I had finally grown some hair!" You'll be happy to know that Melissa STILL has hair, and she has grown into quite a writer in the meantime...I think you'll agree when you read her work here.

She wrote:

In chapter nine Elkind addresses how children react to stress. Elkind writes that children might react to stress with free-floating anxiety, which includes a sense of unrest, having a low mood, and physical ailments that are stress related. Free floating anxiety is most commonly associated with the divorce or separation of parents and is the reason why I experienced free floating anxiety as a child. When I read Elkind’s words, I thought, “That’s me.” I was only three years old when my parents divorced and while I don’t remember a whole lot from around that age, I remember quite a bit of anxiety during my middle school years.

I grew up being shuffled from house to house. My mom would take me to school, my step mom would pick me up from school, and my mom would pick me up after she got off of work. If all of that wasn’t enough, every Wednesday night and every other weekend was spent at my dad’s house. I remember feeling a lot of anxiety as a child. I had to remember to pack my blankie and stuffed lamb in my backpack or else I wouldn’t have them to sleep with at my dad’s house. I always worried about my blankie and lamb being in my backpack at school. My school would have frequent fire drills, which I thought were real fires. I would stand outside of the school with the rest of my classmates and I would freak out, worrying that my prized possessions were going to burn up in my classroom.

The stress reaction that I feel is the most important is school burnout. Elkind described school burnout as occurring when students are excited about school at first, and then they eventually become dissatisfied because of failure or other reasons. In some cases this burnout causes the student to hit a point where they feel done, and they will in some cases be kicked out of school for their actions or they will drop out of school. School burnout made complete sense to me. There have been times when I have been stressed out and thought that I couldn’t finish college.
Students are being taught things like algebra earlier and earlier in school, so I can completely understand that they would feel inadequate and feel like giving up because they didn’t get something that was being taught to them. To me, school burnout is the most serious reaction to stress. School dropouts are at a huge risk of poverty because most students that drop out, never go back to school.

I think it is our job to watch out for these kinds of reactions to stress and try to help children cope in better ways. While reading this chapter, I found myself wondering what is in store for the future of children in our society. It seems like year after year children have more and more stress, and the stress that they have often starts at such a young age. My big question after reading this chapter is that, if this is how children are reacting to stress now and the stresses seem to be getting more extreme, what kind of reactions are children going to have ten years from now?