Investigating the stresses children experience and the coping strategies they use

Children are increasingly experiencing mental health issues and it is has been suggested that this is due to experiencing stress in their everyday lives.

The aims of this study are to develop further insight in to the stressors that younger children face, to find out the types of coping strategies children of this age use and to identify how Educational Psychologists might support pupils with learning the most effective ways to manage stress.

The final aim is to consider how Educational Psychologists could support schools and parents in reducing the stresses that children experience.

This research adopts a mixed methods design to explore children's experiences of stress. Participants were pupils in year 5 and 6 across eight primary schools and one middle school in one Local Authority.

The first phase consisted of the administration of a questionnaire (n=214). The second phase consisted of nine semi-structured interviews. The data from these was analysed using both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The results from the quantitative analysis indicate that children found family stress to be more stressful than stresses relating to friendships, school work, SATs and tests and growing up pressures

 Gender differences were observed with girls reporting more stress relating to school work and friendships than boys. Quantitative results also indicated gender differences in relation to coping strategies with boys reporting playing computer games more as a way to manage stress and girls relying on social support, especially in relation to social media use.

Quantitative and qualitative findings illustrated that children used a wide range of adaptive coping strategies.

However some of these were maladaptive strategies, such as avoidance and eating food, with fewer children selecting more effective problem solving approaches to coping.

The implications for educational psychologists and schools is discussed.