Children ages three and four are learning about their strong feelings every day. When stress is present, they need a parent or someone in a parenting role who will regularly soothe and help them understand their upset so that they learn how to identify their stress and self-soothe.
Symptoms of stress may look different in children than in adults. Symptoms in three-to-four-year-olds could involve excessive crying, anger, fear of being left alone or other fears, loss of appetite, and nightmares. Some young children may act out and have disagreements as they have not yet developed the skills to cope constructively with stress.
Symptoms of stress can look very similar to symptoms of anxiety, and it can be difficult for parents and those in a parenting role to tell the difference. Even though signs of stress and anxiety may look the same, they are different and require different approaches to handle each. Understanding the differences between stress and anxiety will help parents and those in a parenting role properly guide their children through their intense feelings.
Stress
is a typical reaction to a situation or experience (an external trigger or stressor)
generally goes away when the stressor goes away
doesn’t significantly interfere with or alter daily functioning and activities
responds well to coping strategies like exercise, deep breathing, etc
Anxiety
includes intense and persistent worry and fear that is difficult to control and out of proportion to the situation 1
can be long-lasting
significantly interferes with everyday functioning and activities
While mild anxiety may respond well to coping strategies used to manage stress, a child experiencing anxiety may require additional help from a mental health professional. There are resources listed at the end of this tool to help parents and those in a parenting role address complex issues like adverse childhood experiences and persistent and debilitating anxiety.
Every child needs to learn to cope with stress. The following steps will prepare you to help your child through the kinds of stressors many commonly face. The steps include specific, practical strategies and effective conversation starters to guide you in helping your child manage stress in ways that develop their resilience and skills for self-management.
Why Stress?
Whether your three-year-old is crying, clinging, and not allowing you to leave the house when you need to, or your four-year-old child shows fear of strangers or strange situations, stress and how to deal with it can become a daily challenge if you don’t create plans and strategies for dealing with it along with gaining input from your child.
Today, in the short term, teaching skills to manage stress can create
greater opportunities for connection, cooperation, and enjoyment
trust in each other that you have the competence to manage your big feelings
added daily peace of mind
Tomorrow, in the long term, your child
grows skills in self-awareness
grows skills in self-control and managing feelings
develops independence and self-sufficiency
Five Steps for Managing Stress
This five-step process helps you and your child manage stress and grows essential skills in your child. The same process can also address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).
Tip: These steps are done best when you and your child are not tired or in a rush.
Step 1 Get Your Child Thinking by Getting Their Input
Asking helpful questions of your child and learning about their stress can help parents and those in a parenting role understand how stress is processed in the body and brain. Understanding how the brain — for both adults and children — operates when feeling stressed is critical in shaping your responses and offering support for your child.
Anytime you are emotionally shaken from stress, fear, anxiety, anger, or hurt, you are functioning from the part of your brain that developed first — the primal brain — or amygdala. The amygdala responds to stress by fighting, fleeing, or freezing and serves to help us survive dangerous situations. While we rarely face tigers and bears in the wild, several everyday interactions can activate your and your child’s flight or freeze response system. During these intense feelings, some chemicals wash over the rest of the brain, cutting off access to the part of our brain that allows for reasoning and problem-solving.
What does this mean as a parent?
You may notice that once your child is upset, it is difficult to get through to them, or nothing may help the situation. Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, refers to this as your child’s brain being “hijacked.”2 When the brain is hijacked and in a stress response, your attempts at resolving the situation with problem-solving, reasoning, bribes, or threats will do little to solve the current conflict or change your child’s behavior. Effective problem-solving requires logic, language, and creativity, though none can be well utilized when greatly upset. While in a stress response state, your child cannot access the part of their brain, the prefrontal cortex, that engages in reasoning. Furthermore, at two years old, your child’s prefrontal cortex is still in the early stages of development. The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until about age 25!
Three-to-four-year-olds are experiencing many feelings and are just learning how to express them. Despite your child’s growing ability to use words, continue to pay close attention to their facial expressions, movements, and sounds to work on understanding what they are trying to communicate. Your effort to learn from your child will create empathetic interactions that let them know you are interested in their thoughts. This will make a big difference as you manage intense feelings together.
In becoming sensitive to your child’s verbal and nonverbal expressions, you are
responding to their needs
growing their trust in you, sense of safety, and sense of healthy relationships
growing motivation for you and your child to work together
deepening your ability to communicate with one another
growing their ability to advocate for themselves if they need to return to a routine or get more support to manage changes throughout the day
modeling empathy and problem-solving skills
Actions
Before you can get input from your child to understand (and help them understand) what they are feeling, you both need to be calm. Your child will not learn from the situation if you or they are upset.
Ask yourself if your child is hungry or tired. You could offer a snack or transition to a nap.
Check on how you are feeling. If you are angry, frustrated, or overwhelmed, take a “parenting time out” and take several deep breaths (it really does help) or sit quietly for a few minutes.
If your child’s basic needs, like hunger or tiredness, are not issues, take additional steps to help them calm down. This might involve offering a hug, helping them take deep breaths, or holding a blanket or stuffed animal.
Three-to-four-year-olds are learning to understand their feelings. They are also beginning to understand other people’s feelings and how their actions affect others. They will need your support to figure this out. When both you and your child are calm, reflect on your child’s feelings so you can be prepared to help. Ask yourself:
“Does my child have an unmet need?” They might need someone to listen or give them attention, some alone time, or some help so they can be successful at something they are trying to do.
You can ask them about how they are feeling.
“I noticed your eyes got wide, and you came running over. Are you feeling stressed?”
“I noticed that you stayed right beside me instead of going to play with your friends at the new park. I wonder if you are feeling overwhelmed by the new place to play?”
You can also ask them about how they think others might be feeling.
“Your sister cried when you took the toy. What do you think she is feeling?”
“When your friend didn’t get to take their turn, how do you think they were feeling?”
“When you said that to me, how do you think that made me feel?”
If your child has recently experienced a stressor, use that example to reflect on their feelings when you are both calm. You might ask, “How did you feel when we went to the new playground this morning?” Reflecting on recent experiences can help raise your child’s self-awareness.
Use your best listening skills! Remember, what makes a parent or someone in a parenting role stressed can differ significantly from what stresses or upsets a child. Listen closely to what concerns your child most without projecting your thoughts, concerns, and feelings.
Trap: Be sure you talk about stress at a calm time when you are not stressed!
Step 2Teach New Skills
Because stress is such an integral experience in people’s daily lives, you may not realize how it can influence every aspect of your day. Learning about developmental milestones can help you better understand what your child is working hard to learn.
Three-to-four-year-olds are aware of their separateness from others. This awareness can lead to testing boundaries as they attempt to assert themselves and exert control.
Three-to-four-year-olds are interested in demonstrating their independence, though they still learn everyday skills like putting on shoes or fastening a coat. This can lead to frustrations as they are not fully capable of acting independently.
Three- to four-year-olds are growing in their empathy for others. They will attempt to comfort another crying child and show affection for others without prompting.
Three-to-four-year-olds can show a wider range of feelings.
Three- to four-year-olds can carry a conversation by offering two to three sentences and developing a feeling vocabulary. They are learning to describe their body sensations when upset or dealing with big feelings; a feelings vocabulary takes time to develop.
Three-to-four-year-olds may still find it challenging to assert their needs or communicate when upset, and they may throw tantrums to express their anger or frustration.
Teaching is different from just telling. It builds basic skills, improves problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.
Actions
Model skills yourself, and your child will notice and learn.
Get exercise and fresh air. Being active, whether taking a walk or gardening, can help relieve stress.
Remember to breathe. Try making a daily routine of taking 5-10 deep breaths to help you begin the morning calm and focused. If you run into stressful situations during the day, remember to breathe deeply amid the chaos to help yourself better cope with them.
Create quiet time. Busy schedules with children are inevitable. However, everyone needs quiet, unscheduled time to refuel. Say “No” to social commitments when it’s too much. In addition to guarding your children’s quiet time, be sure to carve out your own.
Set a goal for daily connection. Touch can deepen intimacy in any relationship, creating safety, trust, and a sense of well-being. It offers health benefits as well. A study found that those who hugged more were more resistant to colds and other stress-induced illnesses.3
Notice, name, and accept your feelings. As leaders of your household, parents can get in the habit of reassuring family members or friends, “I’m fine,” even when you are not. Yet, you need to be models of emotional intelligence if your children are to learn to manage their feelings. Notice what you are honestly feeling and name it. “I’m tired and cranky this afternoon.” Accepting those feelings instead of fighting them can be a relief and allow you to take action toward change.
Additionally, talk through your regulation strategies as you go through the day. This may look like, “I feel stressed, and my belly hurts slightly. I know fresh air and a walk are helpful when feeling this way. I’d like to move my body and go to the park.” Modeling through actions is even more impactful than teaching specific skills to your child.
Ask, “What is my child developmentally ready to try?” Allow for healthy risks. Realize it will not always be done perfectly or in the ways you expect. Trust your child’s ability to solve their problems with your loving support.
Brainstorm coping strategies. You and your child can use numerous coping strategies depending on what feels right. But when you are feeling stress, it can be challenging to recall what will make you feel better. That’s why brainstorming a list, writing it down, and keeping it ready can be useful when your child needs it. Here are some ideas from Janine Halloran, the author of Coping Skills for Kids:5 Imagine your favorite place, take a walk, get a drink of water, take deep breaths, count to 50, draw, color, or build something.
Work on your child’s feelings vocabulary. Yes, parents and those in a parenting role sometimes must become feelings detectives. If your child shuts down and refuses to tell you what’s happening, you must dig for clues. Though your three-to-four-year-old may speak in complete short sentences, they take longer to develop their feelings vocabulary. They hear feelings in daily conversations less frequently than thoughts or other expressions. Being able to identify feelings is the first step to successfully managing them. As your child develops a vocabulary for their emotional experience, they can communicate their needs and feelings to those around them more. Furthermore, when a child can apply accurate words to their emotional experience, soothing chemicals wash over the brain’s emotional centers to support regulation. This technique is called “name it to tame it.”
Create a calm-down space. During playtime, design a “safe base” or place where your child would like to go when upset to feel better. Maybe their calm-down space is a beanbag chair in their room, a blanket, or a special carpet in the family room. Play act getting upset and going to your comfort spot. What items could be there to make your child feel better? A stuffed bunny, crayons, and a drawing pad? Try out those items and see if you both can feel better together.
Teach your child how to stop rumination. Rumination is when an individual thinks about the same thing over and over. The brain is attempting to problem-solve but stuck in a loop that typically causes distress. If you catch your child uttering the same upsetting story more than once, then your child’s mind has hopped onto the hamster wheel of rumination. In these times, it can be difficult to let go—even for adults!
Talk to your child about the fact that reviewing the same concerns over and again will not help them resolve the issue. Talking about them might help, calming down might help, and learning more might help. Setting a positive goal for change will help. Practice what you can do when you are thinking through the same upsetting thoughts.
When you notice your child struggling with rumination, help them engage with their body and senses. This may look like going for a walk, kicking a ball at the park, enjoying a cold drink, or taking a warm shower. Engaging the senses can help bring your child into the present moment and shift rumination.
Create a family gratitude ritual. People receive many negative messages daily through the news, performance reviews at school or work, and challenges with family and friends. It can seem easier to complain than to appreciate. Balance out your daily ratio of negative to positive messages by looking for the good in your life and articulating it. Model it and involve your children. This is the best antidote to a sense of entitlement or taking your good life for granted while wanting more and more stuff. Psychologists have researched gratefulness and found that it increases people’s health, sense of well-being, and ability to get more and better sleep at night.4
Step 3Practice to Grow Skills and Develop Habits
Practice can be pretend play, cooperatively completing the task together, or trying out a task with you as a coach and ready support. Practice is necessary for children to learn new skills. Practice makes vital new brain connections that strengthen each time your child performs a new action.
Actions
Use “Show me…” statements with a positive tone and body language to express excitement and curiosity. When a child learns a new ability, they are eager to show it off! Give them that chance. Say, “Show me how you can take deep breaths to calm down.” This can be used when you observe their stress mounting.
Recognize effort by using “I notice…” statements like, “I notice how you took some deep breaths when you got frustrated. That’s excellent!”
Accept feelings. If you are going to help your child manage their biggest feelings, it is essential to acknowledge and accept their feelings — even ones you don’t like. When your child is stressed, consider your response. Instead of focusing on their actions or the problem, focus on their feelings FIRST. You could say, “Are you feeling stressed? Would your doll help you feel better?” Then, focus on teaching and practicing positive behavior.
Practice deep breathing. Because deep breathing is such a simple way to assist your child anytime, anywhere, it’s important to get plenty of practice to make it easy to use when needed. Here are some enjoyable ways to practice together!5
Blowing Out Birthday Candles Breathing. You can pretend you are blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Just the image in your head of a birthday cake brings about happy thoughts. And to blow out several small flames, you have to take deep breaths.
Teddy Bear Belly Breathing. Balance a teddy bear on your child’s tummy and give it a ride with the rising and falling of their breath. This would be ideal to practice during your bedtime routine when you are lying down and want to calm down for the evening.
Include reflections on the day in your bedtime routine. You might ask, “What did you like about today?” or “What were your highs and lows of the day.” You should answer the questions as well. This allows your child to share the challenging moments and bright spots, enabling them to feel seen and heard by you and thereby developing a strong relationship with you. Children may not have the chance to reflect on what’s good and abundant in their lives throughout the day. Grateful thoughts are a central contributor to happiness and well-being.
Step 4Support Your Child’s Development and Success
At this point, you’ve taught your child some new strategies for managing stress so that they understand how to take action. You’ve practiced together. You can offer support when needed by reteaching, monitoring, and coaching. Parents and those in a parenting role naturally provide support when they see their child fumble in a situation where they need help. This is no different.
Actions
Ask key questions to support their skills. For example, “You seem stressed. Are you feeling worried? What can you do to help yourself feel better?”
Learn about development. Each new age will present differing challenges and, along with them, stress. So, regularly becoming informed about what developmental milestones your child is working toward will offer you empathy and patience.
Reflect on outcomes. “That playdate with our friends was fun and not scary after all. What did you think?”
Stay engaged. Working together on ideas for trying out new and different coping strategies can help offer additional support and motivation for your child when challenging issues arise.
Step 5Recognize Efforts
No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.
If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.
There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.
Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You told Daddy you were feeling stressed—I love seeing that!” Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment, such as a smile or hug.
Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job. A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you behave in the store, you will get a treat on the drive home.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment. A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.
Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.
Trap: It can be easy to resort to bribes when recognition and occasional rewards are underutilized. If parents or those in a parenting role frequently resort to bribes, it is likely time to revisit the five-step process.
Trap: Think about what behavior a bribe may unintentionally reinforce. For example, offering a sucker if a child stops a tantrum in the grocery store checkout line may teach the child that future tantrums lead to additional treats.
Actions
Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything is moving along smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice. For example, when children complete their homework on time, a short, specific call out is all that’s needed: “I noticed when you got frustrated, you took a break. That’s showing what a big kid you are, dealing with your big feelings.”
Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after getting through your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed. Or, in the morning, once ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.
Closing
Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.
Additional Resources for More Intense Forms of Stress — Adverse Child Experiences, Anxiety, and Depression
If there are high emotions in your household most days, most of the time, then it may be time to consider outside intervention. Physical patterns (like depression) can set in that require the help of a trained professional. Seeking psychological help is the same as going to your doctor for a physical ailment. It is very wise to seek outside help. The following are some U.S.-based resources to check out.
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP)
Has definitions, answers to frequently asked questions, resources, expert videos, and an online search tool to find a local psychiatrist. http://www.aacap.org
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Healthy Children
Provides information for parents and those in a parenting role about emotional wellness, including helping children handle stress, psychiatric medications, grief, and more. http://www.healthychildren.org
American Psychological Association (APA)
Offers information on managing stress, communicating with kids, making stepfamilies work, controlling anger, finding a psychologist, and more. http://www.apa.org
Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT)
Provides free online information so that children and adolescents benefit from the most up-to-date information about mental health treatment and can learn about important differences in mental health supports. Parents and those in a parenting role can search online for local psychologists and psychiatrists for free. http://www.abct.org
American Psychological Association. (2019, October 28). What’s the difference between stress and anxiety? Knowing the difference can ensure you get the help you need. https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/anxiety-difference
Goleman, D. (1994). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Colletti, C. J. M., Forehand, R., Garai, E., Rakow, A., McKee, L., Fear, J. M., & Compas, B. E. (2009). Parent depression and child anxiety: An overview of the literature with clinical implications. Child & Youth Care Forum, 38(3), 151–160. https://doi.org/[DOI]
Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., Turner, R. B., & Doyle, W. J. (2014). Does hugging provide stress-buffering social support? A study of susceptibility to upper respiratory infection and illness. Psychological Science, 26(2), 135-147. https://doi.org/[DOI]
This content does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Tools for Your Child’s Success communities, financial supporters, contributors, SAMHSA, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Explore a step by step process for dealing with simple and challenging parenting topics to build critical life skills and improve your relationship with your child.
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from the part of your brain that developed first — the primal brain — or amygdala. The amygdala responds to stress by fighting, fleeing, or freezing and serves to help us survive dangerous situations. While we rarely face tigers and bears in the wild, several everyday interactions can activate your and your child’s flight or freeze response system. During these intense feelings, some chemicals wash over the rest of the brain, cutting off access to the part of our brain that allows for reasoning and problem-solving.
