Monday, September 26, 2011

Kids, parents, and stress: It's all connected. Plus: The Roundup

You may think you're doing a good job of shielding your kids from your anxiety and stress. But research shows that your children are probably picking up on it anyway—and it's affecting them, physically and emotionally, more than you could imagine.

Last week, I talked with David Code, the author of "To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First," about his new book, "Kids Pick Up on Everything." Research shows that kids can "catch" their parents' stress, overloading their systems until they act out or exhibit mental and physical illness, he says. "Stress is highly contagious between parent and child, even if the parent is unaware of his or her own anxiety."

I also chatted with parenting expert Lori Lite, a mother of three, author, and founder of the "Stress Free Kids," who told me that she believes that children can feel their parents stress and be adversely affected by it. "Children that do not know how to manage stress in a healthy manner will see it manifest in other areas like overeating, headaches, even anger," she says.

You can read my interviews with both experts over at Shine: "Can your kids catch your stress?" 'The research is fascinating and troublesome, but there is hope: By reducing your own stress levels, you can help to reduce your child's.

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Things have gotten busy—so much so that I can't keep up with my posts at WriteEditRepeat! So let's try something new (for me): Every Monday, I'll try to posti highlights of what I worked on the week before. Here's what you may have missed last week:

On Shine:

On Work It, Mom!:

On Savvy Source for Parents
 
On 4 Kids or More

In The Boston Globe

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