Improving Children?s Coping With Everyday Stress: Transporting Treatment Interventions to the School Setting

Abstract

Children are continuously confronted with everyday stressors in their daily routine, and their ability to deal with these stressors has been found to be significantly related to their psychological adjustment. In fact, numerous studies have indicated that having a repertoire of coping skills at a young age can be a "buffer" or moderator" of the effects of negative life stress on the development of psychological maladjustment. Because of the importance of developing adequate skills to navigate life's daily challenges, a number of school-based interventions have been designed with the goal of teaching children specific "problem-focused" skills that are presumed to enhance coping, yet fewer programs have taught children "emotion focused" skills such as cognitive restructuring or emotional regulation to deal with more uncontrollable stressors. This paper begins with a review of the theoretical and empirical literature on children's coping with everyday stress and then provides a description of several existing coping skills training programs for children, highlighting those that are school-based interventions. A description is provided of a brief, school based intervention that was recently implemented to determine the differential effects of teaching young children "problem-focused" skills and teaching "emotion-focused" skills on children's subsequent use of specific coping strategies. The study and its outcomes are reviewed. The final section of the paper focuses on issues related to conducting intervention research in the schools, and specific suggestions for researchers are delineated for every stage in the process of school based research, to best assure that the research program can be implemented in the schools efficiently and effectively.

Coping Strategies of Adults with Mild Intellectual Disability for Stressful Social Interactions

“…However, in contrast to our prediction, when employed Emotion-Focused coping was an adaptive coping strategy and the only coping strategy negatively predictive of psychological distress after controlling for the experience of stressful social interactions and the other coping strategies. Interventions aimed at increasing Emotion-Focused coping have been developed for typically developing children (e.g., Pincus, & Friedman, 2004;Vernon, 1983;1989). For instance, (Vernon 1983(Vernon , 1989 designed an "emotional education" program to help children identify and change negative feelings through role plays, discussion questions, and worksheets and activities.…”

Escala de afrontamiento en niños: propiedades psicométricas

“…Presenta relaciones significativas con dos factores positivos de la prueba de la ACS: afrontamiento centrado en el problema y afrontamiento en relación a los demás y con un factor positivo del BASC, ajuste personal, mientras que se relaciona de forma negativa con el estrés cotidiano y con desajuste escolar. Esta estrategia puede asimilarse a otras que reciben denominaciones cercanas, como afrontamiento centrado en el problema (Griffith et al, 2000;Wadsworth y Compas, 2002) y afrontamiento productivo (Pincus y Friedman, 2004;Seiffge-Krenke et al, 2010). El empleo del afrontamiento dirigido a solucionar el problema es saludable y adaptativo en niños y adolescentes (Connor-Smith y Hampel y Petermann, 2006;Seiffge-Krenke, 2000).…”

Inflence of the Early Prevention Programme “Zippy’s Friends” on Selfdevelopment of Children’s Social Competence and Establishment of Safe Emotional Environment in Educational Institutions

“…D. B. Pincus and A. G. Friedman (2004) distinguish cognitive coping, which is applied by young children already, who reflect their difficult emotional situation or emotional wellbeing. The research by the aforesaid authors as well as by other researchers shows that younger children use The scheme presents a better determined process of reflection and selection of solutions, which help to feel better.…”

“…It has been also proved (Pincus, Friedman, 2004) that children, who manage to successfully deal with daily challenges, are more successful in coping with complicated life situations, expose themselves to less complicated problems, their demonstrate more social behaviour and feel better.…”

“…Pincus, A. G. Friedman (2004) argue that the majority of them focus only on teaching of problem solving strategies. The programmes do not teach children cognitive and emotional coping strategies, i.e., to have a different attitude towards a problem noticing the good sides of the complicated situation; they are not taught how and when to calm down and to talk to somebody.…”