Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

Beans and Pie Crust

Well, I didn’t really experience any of the stressors listed for this assignment as a child, so I chose to ask my dad what he might have experienced when he was younger…

He told me about the poverty he experienced.  He told me how his mother (who died when I was just a baby) raised him on her own and how, when he was younger, he didn’t even realize the situation they were in.  He remembers having “beans and pie crust for dinner…but those were some good beans and pie crust!”  He’s often talked about how well his mother cooked.  I believe it was the nurturing and care that he received from his mom that helped him cope with it.  It wasn’t really until he was older that he said he realized the stress that was on her.

He also discussed his mother’s mental illness that was a result of the many stressors in her life and how he began to know when she would be “getting sick.”  The affect it had on him was mostly the sadness he had for her having to deal with this.  Looking back on it, he had nothing but positive repercussions of this experience.  He talked about how it fueled his desire to do well in school so that she wouldn’t have the stress of a bad child to deal with.  He also discussed how dealing with her helped him to have sensitivity when dealing with others he came across in his life who had mental illness and how God just allowed him to be able to see what he saw and deal with it.  His final outlook he says with a smile in his voice: “I was fortunate; I came through it mostly in tact.” As my dad related to me his experiences with these stressors, he also discussed how malleable children are; that they can go through so much and not even realize it and still “do remarkably”.

Poverty and Brazilian Children

I viewed a 2005 study from several students at Tulane University about Brazilian children, which indicated that at that time, 7-8 million Brazilian children were estimated to be living on the streets while 25 million were living below the poverty line (Bodack, Hunter, Kaufman, Kelly, 2005).  This study discussed how poverty is really the root cause of all the other stressors they experience, including disease and malnutrition, drug abuse, lack of education, and even prostitution.  There has been legislation created to combat the problem of the increasing numbers of street children that gives them rights to many things including “health, nutrition, education, and leisure” (Bodack et. Al, 2005).  Recent legislation has been put into place that provides financial incentives to parents to send their children to school (Bodack et. Al, 2005).  There have also been a number of programs and organizations instituted to help these children.  This study also indicates that, although these solutions are helping the children, more must be done to combat the root cause of their poverty: unjust governmental policy.  Isn’t this always the root of the issue?

Resources

Tulane University “The Truth Behind Children in Brazil”

http://homeport.tcs.tulane.edu/~rouxbee/kids99/brazil.html

The Channel: an organization committed to “transforming the nation of Brazil, one child at a time”

http://www.thechannel.org/aboutUs.html