And modern life seems to present us with more of it than ever before.
Adults struggle to balance work and family life. Adolescents are
stressed about school, relationships and their future. When our
well-being is in some way threatened, our bodies react with what we call
a stress response—we feel anxious or tense!
Babies are no exception. When their basic needs for food, touch and
loving care are neglected, infants show signs of a stress response.
Researchers are beginning to discover that too much stress may affect
babies’ physical and mental health, not only now but also later in life.
During the early months and years of life, some researchers think that
babies develop the foundations of their
stress
response system. The way
this system develops may shape how these children react to stressful
situations for years to come. Too many stressful situations early on may set
a pattern for the way children respond to stress in later years. (Gunnar,
2000)
You know it when you feel it.
For such a common word, stress is very complex. What’s stressful to
one person may not be stressful to another. Even scientists studying
stress don’t always agree on what it is. In general, stress is a
combination of events that we find threatening and our responses to
those events.
Much of the leading scientific work on stress so far has been conducted
with animals, but these results, though informative, can’t be applied
directly to humans. Some research has been conducted with adults, and
even less with children and infants. Even so, scientists are beginning
to come up with clues that may help us understand stress in ways that
may help improve the health of our children. To understand how stress
affects us, it’s helpful to have an idea of how we respond to
threatening situations.
Fight or flight.
When we feel threatened—whether by something like speaking in public
or facing a mugger—most of the body’s regulatory systems switch on. The
brain directs the release of several stress hormones in the body, including
one called cortisol. As a result, we might experience some combination of:
Sweaty palms
Rapid or shallow breathing
Pounding heart rate
Loss of appetite
This is not always a bad thing. In fact, it’s essential to
survival. In the short term, high levels of stress hormones not only
get us ready to fight or run away, but they may also improve certain
types of memory so we’ll recognize similar threats in the future.
We seem to handle short-term episodes of stress well. It’s when stress
hormone levels are high for a long time that health problems occur.
Chronic stress and high cortisol levels have been linked to changes in
nerve cells and the brain, to problems with memory and learning
skills, suppression of the immune system, and behavioral problems.
(McEwen, 2000)
Studying babies, neglect, and
stress.
When it comes to stress and babies, the stakes may be even higher.
Studies with rats and monkeys show that neglectful care early in life
and a lack of parental support when a baby is distressed has a
powerful influence on the development of stress response systems. If
stressful conditions like these continue during early development,
they may set in place a lifelong pattern of higher levels of stress
hormones. Also, these studies show that living in a deprived
environment with little personal contact and few things to see or
touch can result in higher stress hormone levels. On the other hand,
when little ones receive consistent, nurturing attention from
caregivers and the opportunity to explore their world, they are more
likely to develop healthy stress response systems. (Gunnar, 2000)
It’s hard to conduct stress experiments on humans—especially children.
Subjecting babies to parental neglect and threatening situations, and
then measuring the levels of their stress hormones, is unthinkable.
But a study of children adopted from Romanian orphanages found that,
the longer a child lived under extreme conditions, the higher his or
her stress hormones were, even six and a half years after adoption. (Gunnar,
Morison, Chisholm & Schuder, 2001)
Stress early and often?
Scientists studied three groups of children, all between 6 and 12
years old and living with families in western Canada. One group had
been adopted after spending more than eight months of their early
lives in orphanages. Members of the second group had been adopted from
the orphanages when they were four months old or younger. Members of
the third group were born in Canada and raised in their original
families. (Gunnar et al., 2001)
Parents took three samples of their children’s saliva on three days
when nothing unusual was scheduled: once in the morning, again at
noon, and finally within a half-hour of bedtime. After analyzing the
saliva samples, the scientists found that the children who spent more
than eight months in orphanages had significantly higher average
levels of cortisol than either the children adopted earlier in life or
the Canadian-born children. And the longer the children had lived in
orphanages, the higher their average levels of cortisol. (Gunnar et
al., 2001)
The study was a small one. More research is needed before scientists
can say for sure that living in stressful situations early in life
causes children to have higher levels of stress hormones later on, or
even that increased hormone levels always lead to health problems.
But, the researchers noted, their results are consistent with studies
in rats that point to a sensitive time in early development when the
response to stress may be set. (Gunnar et al., 2001)
Many questions about stress and its effect on babies remain
unanswered, but one encouraging finding is emerging: how parents and
other caregivers treat infants may help lessen the impact of early
stress. (Gunnar, 2000)
Helpful Parenting Tips
You can’t shield your baby from everything that might cause stress.
But you can help your baby through stressful times, often just by
doing what comes naturally.
Attend to your baby’s needs by providing a warm and supportive environment and responding to your baby when she needs you.
Get to know your baby and try different ways to soothe her. One baby may be soothed by a bath, another may like to be cuddled, and some prefer rocking.
Try to identify stressful situations for your baby.
There is no such thing as spoiling babies with love and attention.
Encourage your baby to experience new and exciting things, but be there to provide a calm, supportive presence so she experiences success in her exploration of the world.
Recognize serious traumatic experiences when they happen, and don’t ignore them. Getting help soon after trauma may be effective in preventing brain changes that may be harder to treat later in life.
References:
Cicchetti, D., &
Walker, E. F. (2001). Editorial: Stress and development:
Biological and psychological consequences. Development and
Psychopathology, 13, 413-418.
Gunnar, M. R.
(2000). Early adversity and the development of stress reactivity
and regulation. In C. A. Nelson (Ed.), The Minnesota Symposium on
Child Psychology: Vol. 31.The effects of early adversity on
neurobehavioral development (pp. 163-200). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Gunnar, M. R.,
Morison, S. J., Chisholm, K., & Schuder, M. (2001). Salivary
cortisol levels in children adopted from Romanian orphanages.
Development and Psychopathology, 13, 611-628.
McEwen, B. S.
(2000). The neurobiology of stress: From serendipity to clinical
relevance. Brain Research, 886, 172-189.
