Stressors on Children

To be an effective educator, we must take the time to get to know our students and the backgrounds of the families they come from (Kottler, Zehm, Kottler, 2005). Therefore, when we encounter a family that has had a stressor altering the life of that family, we can be better prepared.

One such stressor in Haiti if you visit the World Vision website, worldvision.org, is hunger. Child in Haiti suffer from hunger and are therefore malnourished, under developed, and often sick. Some children in Haiti will die from hunger or complications associated with hunger. It is so sad to think of children and families dying from a lack of food.

On the other hand, growing up although I never viewed it as a stressor at the time, I had the stress of not knowing if I would have a home in the morning. I lived in Florida for most of my life and hurricanes were a frequent happening in Florida. We lived in a trailer so when a hurricane was coming, we took important and necessary items and went to my grandparents' house. Not only did I leave not knowing if my home would be there when we returned, but my dad was a part of a team to move people from the beaches so he was never home the night the hurricanes would hit. I never realized it then, as I said, because I knew I was well taken care of, but looking back now that had to have created tremendous stress not just for myself, but the rest of my family and others who lived around us.

A stressor for a child can be something as simple as not getting to wear a certain shirt to those stressors that are more complex as learned about through the resources this week. How we as educators help our students handle these situations as well as assisting the families sometimes can be beneficial in changing what could be the outcome(s) for the student.