Coping with family stress

What is stress?

Stress is the body’s reaction to change that requires a physical, mental, or emotional adjustment and can be broken down into three categories:

• Acute stress – also known as our ‘fight or flight’ response. This is our body’s immediate reaction to any type of perceived threat, and can be quite intense. Examples of acute stress might be the first day at a new job or giving a speech.  
• Episodic acute stress – this occurs when someone frequently has bouts of acute stress. These people might be constantly rushing and often overextend themselves, e.g. the stress of being in Year 12 and dealing with assessments or exams.
• Chronic stress – this stress response is subtler and tends to be more long-lasting with stress spanning over weeks or months as factors contributing to your stress continue to pile up. 

Communication tips

What is great communication?

Conveying our message is only one part of communication. Great communication goes further and allows us to build trust, self-esteem and strong healthy relationships.

• Great communication is a two-way process. Listening is as important as talking
• Your child’s brain is still developing including learning to handle their emotions and communicate well
• Successful communication with your child depends on what, how, when, where and why you say things. What you don’t say is also important!

Communication styles

The way we communicate differs based on gender, cultural background, age and the situation.

It’s likely you and your child have different communication expectations because of the generation gap.

However, in general there are three communication styles. The first is more helpful when compared with the other two.

Helping kids identify and express feelings

Understanding feelings in kids

Kids deal with many of the same feelings adults do

Kids experience complex feelings just like adults. They get frustrated, excited, nervous, sad, jealous, frightened, worried, angry and embarrassed.

However young kids usually don’t have the vocabulary to talk about how they are feeling. Instead they communicate their feelings in other ways.

Kids can express their feelings through facial expressions, through their body, their behaviour and play. Sometimes they may act out their feelings in physical, inappropriate or problematic ways.

From the moment kids are born, they start learning the emotional skills they need to identify, express and manage their feelings. They learn how to do this through their social interactions and relationships with important people in their lives such as parents, grandparents and carers.

Being a parent means you’ve got a really important role to play in helping kids understand their feelings and behaviours. Kids need to be shown how to manage their feelings in positive and constructive ways.