Stress and Child Development

Ross A. Thompson

213 citations0/0 files storedThe Future of Children

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Child Abuse and Trauma Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Child Welfare and Adoption

Abstract

Children's early social experiences shape their developing neurological and biological systems for good or for ill, writes Ross Thompson, and the kinds of stressful experiences that are endemic to families living in poverty can alter children's neurobiology in ways that undermine their health, their social competence, and their ability to succeed in school and in life. For example, when children are born into a world where resources are scarce and violence is a constant possibility, neurobiological changes may make them wary and vigilant, and they are likely to have a hard time controlling their emotions, focusing on tasks, and forming healthy relationships. Unfortunately, these adaptive responses to chronic stress serve them poorly in situations, such as school and work, where they must concentrate and cooperate to do well. But thanks to the plasticity of the developing brain and other biological systems, the neurobiological response to chronic stress can be buffered and even reversed, Thompson writes, especially when we intervene early in children's lives. In particular, warm and nurturing relationships between children and adults can serve as a powerful bulwark against the neurobiological changes that accompany stress, and interventions that help build such relationships have shown particular promise. These programs have targeted biological parents, of course, but also foster parents, teachers and other caregivers, and more distant relatives, such as grandparents. For this reason, Thompson suggests that the concept of two-generation programs may need to be expanded, and that we should consider a "multigenerational" approach to helping children living in poverty cope and thrive in the face of chronic stress.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 213 citations exist upstream.

References

2002Role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children 2002Risky families: Family social environments and the mental and physical health of offspring.2011Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease 2012The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: Implications for prevention.2011Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician: Translating Developmental Science Into Lifelong Health 2012Childhood Poverty, Chronic Stress, Self-Regulation, and Coping 2007Phonetic learning as a pathway to language: new data and native language magnet theory expanded (NLM-e)2012Child development in the context of adversity: Experiential canalization of brain and behavior.

Cited by

2020The Relation between Parenting Stress and Child Behavior Problems: Negative Parenting Styles as Mediator 2018Intergenerational learning: Are children key in spurring climate action?2015Social Support and Developmental Psychopathology 2020Overcrowded classrooms – The Achilles heel of South African education?

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.