6.3 Psychosocial Development in Early Childhood

What are emotional and social developments like in early childhood?

The time between a child’s second and sixth birthday is full of new social experiences and development. At the beginning of this stage, a child selfishly engages in the world—the goal is to please the self. As children get older, they realize that relationships are built on give-and-take. They typically start to learn to empathize with others and make friends.

While children are learning about their place in various relationships, they are also developing an understanding of emotion. Two-year-olds do not have a good grasp on their emotions, but by the time they are six, most understand their emotions better. They also understand how to control and mask their emotions—even to the point that they may put on a different emotion than they are actually feeling. By the time children reach six years old, they tend to understand that other people have emotions. They typically develop an understanding that all emotions involved in a situation (theirs and other people’s) should be taken into consideration. That said, although most six-year-olds understand these things, they are not always good at putting the knowledge into action. We’ll examine some of these issues in this section.

 

Psychodynamic and Psychosocial Theories of Early Childhood

Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory

Consistent with the sexual development we learned about earlier, Freud asserted that children pass through two stages of his theory during early childhood: stage 2 (anal stage) and stage 3 (phallic stage).

The anal stage begins around 18 months of age and lasts until the child is three years old. During the anal stage, Freud believed that the libido source shifted from the mouth (in stage 1) to the anus. The child, then, receives pleasure from defecating. The child, at this point, understands that they have some amount of control over their lives, including control of when and where they defecate. This can lead to difficulties during potty training. What matters, in terms of Freud’s theory, is how the parent reacts to inevitable difficulties in potty training. Parental reactions during potty training may set up their child to react in one of two ways: (1) parents who are harsh or who ridicule the child for mistakes may have children who stubbornly hold on to their feces in an effort to not have an accident – these children may become anal retentive or (2) parents who are too easy-going may have a child who reacts by purposefully making a mess – these children may become anal expulsive. Adults who are anal retentive tend to be stubborn, very neat, rigid, and stingy. Adults who are anal-expulsive tend to be messy, wasteful, and harsh.

The phallic stage of psychosexual development occurs from ages three to six. According to Freud, during the phallic stage, the child develops an attraction to the opposite-sex parent, which is called the Oedipus Complex for boys and the Electra Complex for girls. When the child recognizes that the opposite-sex parent is unavailable, the child learns to model their own behavior after the same-sex parent. The child develops their own sense of masculinity or femininity from this resolution.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory: Initiative vs. Guilt

While Erik Erikson was influenced by Freud, he believed that the relationships that people have, not psychosexual stages, are what influence personality development. At the beginning of early childhood, the child is still in the autonomy versus shame and doubt stage (stage 2).

By age three, the child begins stage 3: initiative versus guilt. The trust and autonomy of previous stages develop into a desire to take initiative or to think of ideas and initiate action (Erikson, 1982). Once children reach the preschool stage (ages 3–6 years), they are capable of initiating activities and asserting control over their world through social interactions and play. According to Erikson, preschool children must resolve the task of initiative vs. guilt. By learning to plan and achieve goals while interacting with others, preschool children can master this task.

Children may want to build a fort with the cushions from the living room couch, open a lemonade stand in the driveway, or make a zoo with their stuffed animals and issue tickets to those who want to come. Or they may just want to get themselves ready for bed without any assistance. Initiative, a sense of ambition and responsibility, occurs when parents allow a child to explore within limits and then support the child’s choice. To reinforce taking initiative, caregivers should offer praise for the child’s efforts and avoid being critical of messes or mistakes. Placing pictures of drawings on the refrigerator, purchasing mud pies for dinner, and admiring towers of legos will facilitate the child’s sense of initiative. These children will develop self-confidence and feel a sense of purpose. Those who are unsuccessful at this stage—with their initiative misfiring or stifled by over-controlling parents—may develop feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Soggy washrags and toothpaste left in the sink pale in comparison to the smiling face of a five-year-old emerging from the bathroom with clean teeth and pajamas!

That said, it is important that caregivers do their best to kindly guide the child to the right actions. Remember that according to Freud and Kohlberg, children are developing a sense of morality during this time. Erikson agrees. If the child does leave those soggy washrags in the sink, have the child help clean them up. It is possible that the child will not be happy with helping to clean, and the child may even become aggressive or angry, but it is important to remember that children are still learning how to navigate their world. They are trying to build a sense of autonomy, and they may not react well when they are asked to do something that they had not planned. Parents should be aware of this and try to be understanding but also firm. The use of gentle parenting, positive discipline, and related consequences will help guide children to positive behaviors. Guilt for a situation where a child did not do their best allows a child to understand their responsibilities and helps the child learn to exercise self-control (remember the marshmallow test). The goal is to find a balance between initiative and guilt, not a free-for-all where the parent allows the child to do anything they want to. Caregivers must guide children if they are to have a successful resolution in this stage.

 Developing a Concept of Self

Self Concept

Early childhood is a time of forming an initial sense of self. A self-concept or idea of who we are, what we are capable of doing, and how we think and feel is a social process that involves considering how others view us. It might be said, then, that in order to develop a sense of self, you must interact with others. Interactionist theorists Cooley and Mead offer two interesting explanations of how a sense of self develops.

Cooley’s Looking-Glass Self

Charles Horton Cooley 1964) suggested that our self-concept comes from looking at how others respond to us. This process, known as the looking-glass self, involves looking at how others seem to view us and interpreting this as we make judgments about whether we are good or bad, strong or weak, beautiful or ugly, and so on. Of course, we do not always interpret their responses accurately so our self-concept is not simply a mirror reflection of the views of others. After forming an initial self-concept, we may use our existing self-concept as a mental filter screening out those responses that do not seem to fit our ideas of who we are. So compliments may be negated, for example.

Think of times in your life when you felt more self-conscious. The process of the looking-glass self is pronounced when we are preschoolers. Later in life, we also experience this process when we are in a new school, a new job, or taking on a new role in our personal lives and trying to gauge our own performance. When we feel more positive about who we are, we focus less on how we appear to others.

In summary, self-concept is our self-description according to various categories, such as our external and internal qualities. In contrast, self-esteem is an evaluative judgment about who we are. The emergence of cognitive skills in this age group typically results in improved perceptions of oneself.

Mead’s I and Me

George Herbert Mead (1967) offered an explanation of how we develop a social sense of self by being able to see ourselves through the eyes of others. There are two parts of the self: the “I,” which is the part of the self that is spontaneous, creative, innate, and is not concerned with how others view us, and the “me,” or the social definition of who we are.

When we are born, we are all “I” and act without concern about how others view us. But the socialized self begins when we are able to consider how one important person views us. This initial stage is called “taking the role of the significant other.” For example, a child may pull a cat’s tail and be told by his mother, “No! Don’t do that; that’s bad,” while receiving a slight slap (spanking or slight slapping is not a recommended child-rearing practice) on the hand. Later, the child may mimic the same behavior toward the self and say aloud, “No, that’s bad,” while patting his own hand. What has happened? The child is able to see himself through the eyes of the mother. As the child grows and is exposed to many situations and rules of culture, he begins to view the self in the eyes of many others through these cultural norms or rules. This is referred to as “taking the role of the generalized other” and results in a sense of self with many dimensions. The child comes to have a sense of self as a student, as a friend, as a son, and so on.

Exaggerated Sense of Self

One of the ways to gain a clearer sense of self is to exaggerate those qualities that are to be incorporated into the self. Preschoolers often like to exaggerate their own qualities and seek validation from adults and/or peers. They seek validation, such as if they are the biggest or smartest child or the child who can jump the highest. Much of this may be due to the simple fact that children typically do not understand their own limits. Young children may really believe that they can pick up the refrigerator or win a running race with an Olympic athlete.

This exaggeration tends to be replaced by a more realistic sense of self in middle childhood as children realize that they do have limitations. Part of this process includes having caregivers who allow children to explore their capabilities and give the child authentic feedback. Another important part of this process involves children learning that other people have capabilities, too, and that their own capabilities may differ from those of others.

Emotional self-regulation

Emotional self-regulation refers specifically to an individual’s ability to recognize and name how they are feeling and to express their emotions constructively. Adaptive emotion regulation involves staying in touch with how you are genuinely feeling while at the same time making intentional decisions about how you are going to express those feelings. Three- and four-year-olds learn new ways of expressing their feelings verbally. They also learn how to cope with negative emotions in ways that make themselves feel better—they put their heads down to reduce sensory input that may be overwhelming or unpleasant, they talk out loud to reassure themselves that things will be okay, and they recalibrate their goals or desires to match the options that are available to them, rather than to continue asking for something they cannot have (Thompson & Goodvin, 2007). These strategies, and others, reduce the frequency and severity of tantrums, feelings of loneliness, and other unpleasant emotional responses. They can also help children remain calm when they are very excited or happy.

Self-Control

One important aspect of self-concept is understanding our ability to exhibit self-control and delay gratification. Self-control involves both response inhibition and delayed gratification. Response inhibition involves the ability to recognize a potential behavior before it occurs and stop the initiation of behaviors that could result in undesired consequences. Delayed gratification refers to the process of forgoing immediate or short-term rewards to achieve more valuable goals in the longer term.

One of the places where the developmental task of initiative vs. guilt is negotiated involves preschoolers’ struggles to learn to control their behaviors and emotions. Behavioral self-regulation refers broadly to the self-control individuals use to modify their actions. Sometimes, behaviors need to be modified so that they are socially appropriate to the context (e.g., minding parents or following preschool rules), and sometimes so that they better meet an individual’s own goals (e.g., getting a fort built or joining a pretend game). Adaptive behavioral regulation involves staying in touch with your genuine goals while at the same time making intentional decisions about the actions you are going to show in service of those goals.

Self‐regulation of behavior refers to both:

1. “Do” regulation: The performance of actions desired by others that we don’t really want to do  (“Put away your toys”), and
2. “Don’t” regulation: Stopping ourselves from doing something we really want to do (“Don’t eat that cookie!”).

During toddlerhood, we see the start of behavioral self-regulation, and it is one of the central tasks of early childhood, but these processes take many years to fully develop. Executive function refers to self-regulatory processes, such as the ability to inhibit behavior or cognitive flexibility, that enable adaptive responses to new situations or to reach a specific goal. Executive function skills gradually emerge during early childhood and continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence. Like many cognitive changes, brain maturation, especially the prefrontal cortex, along with experience, influences the development of executive function skills. As executive function improves, children become less impulsive (Traverso, Viterbori, & Usai, 2015). Children show higher executive function skills when parents are warm and responsive, use scaffolding when the child is trying to solve a problem and provide cognitively stimulating environments (Fay-Stammbach, Hawes & Meredith, 2014).

When do children start self-regulating, and what affects how it develops? Children start regulating their behaviors in infancy, beginning with physiological regulation and consistency in patterns of behavior, such as sleeping and eating. However, as infants move into toddlerhood, they are faced with the challenge of regulating their behavior as it relates to others in social situations. This type of self-regulation is typically not seen with any degree of consistency until a child’s second year. However, the capacity to self-regulate may develop earlier or later depending on:

1. Developmental progress in other areas, such as cognition and working memory, helps children become aware of what constitutes acceptable social behavior.
2. The child’s temperament, both reactivity and effortful control.
3. The quality of parent-child interactions.
4. The quality of the general home and/or school (day-care) environment.

Why is self-regulation important? Being good at behavioral self-regulation (compared to having difficulty regulating one’s behavior) is associated with numerous positive outcomes for children, including:

1. More success in the transition to school and better academic achievement once they start school.
2. Higher levels of social competence are seen in greater success in developing school-based peer relationships.
3. Fewer problems with externalizing behaviors such as anger and impulsivity.
4. There are higher levels of prosocial behaviors as children move from infancy into toddlerhood and early childhood and increases in prosocial behavior throughout childhood.

While self-control takes many years to develop, we typically see the beginnings of this skill during early childhood. This ability to delay gratification in young children was thought to predict many positive outcomes.  The ability to delay gratification was traditionally assessed in young children with the “Marshmallow Test” (Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1972).  During this experiment, participants were presented with a marshmallow (or another small treat) and were given a choice to eat it or wait for a certain period of time without eating it so that they could have two marshmallows. Michel et al. (2011) found that preschoolers who were able to delay gratification for a longer period of time had higher levels of resilience, better academic and social competence, and greater planning ability in their adolescence.

However, Watts et al. (2018) replication of the Marshmallow Test, originally conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960s, aimed to assess whether the ability to delay gratification still correlated with long-term academic and behavioral outcomes. This replication involved more diverse samples to account for socioeconomic and cultural factors, revealing that while self-control is a significant predictor of future success, environmental influences, socioeconomic status, and upbringing play crucial roles as well.

In 2024, the Watts et al. (2018) research was replicated by Sperber et al. (2024), and the results indicate that Marshmallow Test performance does not reliably predict adult outcomes supporting the idea that multiple factors influence the development of self-regulation.

Social Development: The Importance of Play

The development of play is an important milestone in early childhood. Play holds a crucial role in providing a safe, caring, protective, confidential, and containing space where children can recreate themselves and their experiences through an exploratory process (Winnicott, 1942; Erikson, 1963). During this stage, pretend play is a great way for children to express their thoughts, emotions, fears, and anxieties. One type of pretend play is sociodramatic play, where children imitate adults and take on adult roles and activities, like playing house or doctor. Vygotsky saw sociodramatic play as fuel for cognitive, social, and emotional development, and research confirmed it showing sociodramatic play predicted better self-regulation in 3- and 4-year-olds (Elias & Berk, 2002).

Another important type of pretend play is rough and tumble play or play fighting, wrestling, and chasing. Commonly seen in rats, monkeys, and other mammals, rough-and-tumble play is believed to be an evolutionary adaptation that helps build the social brain (Pellis and Pellis, 2007). It’s more frequent and rough in boys. It is associated with human social competence. Rough and tumble play is different than real fighting as the participants are often laughing and taking care not to harm each other. It helps children learn restraint and impulse control.

Early childhood play can be understood by observing the elements of fantasy, organization, and comfort. Fantasy, the process of make-believe, is an essential behavior the child engages in during pretend play; organization helps the child structure pretend play into a story and utilize cause-and-effect thinking, and comfort is used to assess the ease and pleasure of the engagement in play.

As children progress through the stage of early childhood, they also progress through several stages of non-social and social play. Stages of play is a theory and classification of participation in play developed by Mildred Parten Newhall in 1929 (Hughes, 2009). Parten observed American children at free play. She recognized six different types of play:

Parten’s Classification of Types of Play in Preschool Children^[1]

Unoccupied Play	Children’s behavior seems more random and without a specific goal. This is the least common form of play.
Solitary Play	Children play by themselves, do not interact with others, nor are they engaging in similar activities as the children around them.
Onlooker Play	Children are observing other children playing. They may comment on the activities and even make suggestions, but will not directly join the play.
Parallel Play	Children play alongside each other, using similar toys, but do not directly act with each other.
Associative Play	Children will interact with each other and share toys, but are not working toward a common goal.
Cooperative Play	Children are interacting to achieve a common goal. Children may take on different tasks to reach that goal.

Relationships between parents and children continue to play a significant role in children’s development during early childhood. As children mature, parent-child relationships naturally change. Preschool and grade-school children are more capable, have their own preferences, and sometimes refuse or seek to compromise with parental expectations. This can lead to greater parent-child conflict, and how conflict is managed by parents further shapes the quality of parent-child relationships. The parenting style used to rear a child will likely impact that child’s future success in romantic, peer, and parenting relationships.

Diana Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

Baumrind (1971) identified a model of parenting that focuses on the level of control/ expectations that parents have regarding their children and how warm/responsive they are. Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist, coined the following parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive/indulgent. Later, Maccoby and Martin added the uninvolved/neglectful style.

It is beneficial to evaluate the support and demandingness of a caregiver in order to determine which style is being used and how to effectively use it.  Support refers to the amount of affection, acceptance, and warmth a parent provides to a child.  Demandingness refers to the degree a parent controls a child’s behavior.

Authoritative Parenting. In general, children tend to develop greater competence and self-confidence when parents have high but reasonable and consistent expectations for children’s behavior, communicate well with them, are warm and responsive, and use reasoning rather than coercion to guide children’s behaviors.  This kind of parenting style has been described as authoritative. (Baumrind, 2013). Authoritative parents are supportive and show interest in their kids’ activities but are not overbearing and allow children to make constructive mistakes.  This “tender teacher” approach is deemed the most optimal parenting style to use in Western cultures.  Children whose parents use the authoritative style are generally happy, capable, and successful (Maccoby, 1992).

Authoritarian Parenting. Authoritarian is the traditional model of parenting in which parents make the rules and children are expected to be obedient. Parents using the authoritarian (“rigid ruler”) approach are low in support and high in demandingness.  These parents expect and demand obedience because they are “in charge,” and they do not provide any explanations for their orders (Baumrind, 1991). Parents also provide well-ordered and structured environments with clearly stated rules.

Many would conclude that this is the parenting style used by Harry Potter’s harsh aunt and uncle and Cinderella’s vindictive stepmother.  Consequently, children reared in this way may fear rather than respect their parents and, because their parents do not allow discussion, may take out their frustrations on safer targets-perhaps as bullies toward peers. Children reared in environments using the authoritarian approach are more likely to be obedient and proficient but score lower in happiness, social competence, and self-esteem.

Permissive Parenting. Permissive parenting involves holding expectations of children that are below what could be reasonably expected from them.  Parents who are high in support and low in demandingness are likely using the permissive-also called the indulgent-style.  Their children tend to rank low in happiness and self-regulation and are more likely to have problems with authority.  Parents using this approach are lenient, do not expect their children to adhere to boundaries or rules, and avoid confrontation (Baumrind, 1991). Children fail to learn self-discipline and may feel somewhat insecure because they do not know the limits.

Uninvolved Parenting. Children reared by parents who are low in both support and demandingness tend to rank lowest across all life domains, lack self-control, have low self-esteem, and are less competent than their peers.  Parents using the uninvolved (or sometimes referred to as indifferent or neglectful) approach are neglectful or rejecting of their children and do not provide most, if any, necessary parenting responsibilities.

Keep in mind that most parents do not follow any model completely. Real people tend to fall somewhere in between these styles. Sometimes parenting styles change from one child to the next or in times when the parent has more or less time and energy for parenting. Parenting styles can also be affected by concerns the parent has in other areas of his or her life. For example, parenting styles tend to become more authoritarian when parents are tired and perhaps more authoritative when they are more energetic. Sometimes parents seem to change their parenting approach when others are around, maybe because they become more self-conscious as parents or are concerned with giving others the impression that they are a “tough” parent or an “easy-going” parent. Additionally, parenting styles may reflect the type of parenting someone saw modeled while growing up.

Culture. The impact of culture and class cannot be ignored when examining parenting styles. The model of parenting described above assumes that the authoritative style is the best because this style is designed to help the parent raise a child who is independent, self-reliant, and responsible. These are qualities favored in “individualistic” cultures such as the United States, particularly by the middle class. However, in “collectivistic” cultures such as China or Korea, being obedient and compliant are favored behaviors. Authoritarian parenting has been used historically and reflects the cultural need for children to do as they are told. African-American, Hispanic, and Asian parents tend to be more authoritarian than non-Hispanic whites. In societies where family members’ cooperation is necessary for survival, rearing children who are independent and who strive to be on their own makes no sense. However, in an economy based on being mobile in order to find jobs and where one’s earnings are based on education, raising a child to be independent is very important.

In a classic study on social class and parenting styles, Kohn (1977) explains that parents tend to emphasize qualities that are needed for their own survival when parenting their children. Working-class parents are rewarded for being obedient, reliable, and honest in their jobs. They are not paid to be independent or to question the management; rather, they move up and are considered good employees if they show up on time, do their work as they are told, and can be counted on by their employers. Consequently, these parents reward honesty and obedience in their children. Middle-class parents who work as professionals are rewarded for taking the initiative, being self-directed, and being assertive in their jobs. They are required to get the job done without being told exactly what to do. They are asked to be innovative and to work independently. These parents encourage their children to have those qualities as well by rewarding independence and self-reliance. Parenting styles can reflect many elements of culture.

Parenting Styles and Outcomes for Children

Parenting style has been found to predict child well-being in the domains of social competence, academic performance, psychosocial development, and problem behavior.  Research in the United States, based on parent interviews, child reports, and parent observations, consistently finds:

• Children and adolescents whose parents use the authoritative style typically rate themselves and are rated by objective measures as more socially and instrumentally competent than those whose parents do not use the authoritative style (Baumrind, 1991; Weiss & Schwarz, 1996; Miller et al., 1993).
• Children and adolescents whose parents are uninvolved typically perform most poorly in all domains.

In general, parental responsiveness tends to predict social competence and psychosocial functioning, while parental demandingness is typically associated with instrumental competence and behavioral control (e.g., academic performance and deviance). These findings indicate:

• Children and adolescents reared in households using the authoritarian style (high in demandingness but low in responsiveness) tend to perform moderately well in school and be uninvolved in problem behavior but tend to have poorer social skills, lower self-esteem, and higher levels of depression when compared to their peers who are reared in households using the authoritative approach.
• Children and adolescents reared in homes using the indulgent style (high in responsiveness, low in demandingness) tend to be more involved in problem behavior and perform less well in school, but they have been shown to have higher self-esteem, better social skills and lower levels of depression when compared to their peers who are not reared using the indulgent style (Darling, 1999).

Table 1. Four parenting styles. Other less advantageous parenting styles include authoritarian (in contrast to authoritative), permissive, and uninvolved.

	Support (Low)	Support (High)
Demand (Low)	Uninvolved	Permissive
Demand (High	Authoritarian	Authoritative

In reviewing the literature on parenting styles, it is apparent that using the authoritative parenting style is associated with both instrumental and social competence and lower levels of problem behavior at all developmental stages for youth in the United States.  The benefits of using the authoritative parenting style and the detrimental effects of the uninvolved parenting style are evident as early as the preschool years and continue throughout adolescence and into early adulthood.

Support for Baumrind’s Authoritative Parenting

Support for the benefits of authoritative parenting has been found in countries as diverse as the Czech Republic (Dmitrie et al., 2004).  India (Carson et al., 1999), China (Pilgrim et al., 1999), Israel (Mayseless et al., 2003), and Palestine (Punaet al., 1997).   In fact, authoritative parenting appears to be superior in Western, individualistic societies—so much so that some people have argued that there is no longer a need to study it (Steinberg, 2001).

Other researchers are less certain about authoritative parenting and point to differences in cultural values and beliefs.  For example, while many children reared in European-American cultures fare poorly with too much strictness (authoritarian parenting), children reared in Chinese cultures often perform well, especially academically.  The reason for this likely stems from Chinese culture viewing strictness in parenting as related to training, which is not central to American parenting beliefs. (Chao, 1994).

As children mature, parent-child relationships should naturally adapt to accommodate developmental changes.  Parent-child relationships that do not adapt to a child’s abilities can lead to high parent-child conflict and, ultimately, a reduced parent-child relationship quality.

Stress in Early Childhood

What is the impact of stress on child development? The answer is complex and depends on several factors, including the number of stressors, the duration of stress, and the child’s ability to cope with stress.

Children experience different types of stressors that could be manifest in various ways. Normal, everyday stress can provide an opportunity for young children to build coping skills and poses little risk to development. Even long-lasting stressful events, such as changing schools or losing a loved one, can be managed fairly well.

Some experts have theorized that there is a point where prolonged or excessive stress becomes harmful and can lead to serious health effects. When stress builds up in early childhood, neurobiological factors are affected; in turn, levels of the stress hormone cortisol exceed normal ranges. Due in part to the biological consequences of excessive cortisol, children can develop physical, emotional, and social symptoms. Physical conditions include cardiovascular problems, skin conditions, susceptibility to viruses, headaches, or stomach aches in young children. Emotionally, children may become anxious or depressed, violent, or feel overwhelmed. Socially, they may become withdrawn and act out toward others or develop new behavioral ticks such as biting nails or picking at skin.

Types of Stress

Researchers have proposed three distinct types of responses to stress in young children: positive, tolerable, and toxic. Positive stress (also called eustress) is necessary and promotes resilience, or the ability to function competently under threat. Such stress arises from brief, mild to moderate stressful experiences, buffered by the presence of a caring adult who can help the child cope with the stressor. This type of stress causes minor, temporary physiological and hormonal changes in the young child, such as an increase in heart rate and a change in hormone cortisol levels. The first day of school, a family wedding, or making new friends are all examples of positive stressors. Tolerable stress comes from adverse experiences that are more intense in nature but short-lived and can usually be overcome. Some examples of tolerable stressors are family disruptions, accidents, or the death of a loved one. The body’s stress response is more intensely activated due to severe stressors; however, the response is still adaptive and temporary.

Toxic stress is a term coined by pediatrician Jack P. Shonkoff of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University to refer to chronic, excessive stress that exceeds a child’s ability to cope, especially in the absence of supportive caregiving from adults. Extreme, long-lasting stress in the absence of supportive relationships to buffer the effects of a heightened stress response can produce damage and weakening of bodily and brain systems, which can lead to diminished physical and mental health throughout a person’s lifetime. Exposure to such toxic stress can result in the stress response system becoming more highly sensitized to stressful events, producing increased wear and tear on physical systems through over-activation of the body’s stress response. This wear and tear increases the later risk of various physical and mental illnesses.

Consequences of Toxic Stress

Children who experience toxic stress or who live in extremely stressful situations of abuse over long periods of time can suffer long-lasting effects. The structures in the midbrain or limbic system, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, can be vulnerable to prolonged stress (Middlebrooks & Audage, 2008). High levels of the stress hormone cortisol can reduce the size of the hippocampus and affect a child’s memory abilities. Stress hormones can also reduce immunity to disease. If the brain is exposed to long periods of severe stress, it can develop a low threshold, making a child hypersensitive to stress in the future.

With chronic toxic stress, children undergo long-term hyper-arousal of brain stem activity. This includes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and arousal states. These children may experience a change in brain chemistry, which leads to hyperactivity and anxiety. Therefore, it is evident that chronic stress in a young child’s life can create significant physical, emotional, psychological, social, and behavioral changes; however, the effects of stress can be minimized if the child has the support of caring adults.

Coping with Stress

Stress has four different stages. In the first stage, it usually causes alarm. Next, in the second or appraisal stage, the child attempts to find meaning from the event. Stage three consists of children seeking out coping strategies. Lastly, in stage four, children execute one or more of the coping strategies. However, children with a lower tolerance for stressors are more susceptible to alarm and find a broader array of events to be stressful. These children often experience chronic or toxic stress.