Part of the How to Help series of books exploring issues commonly faced by children and young people at home and in school, Managing Stress and Distress offers an accessible introduction to how heightened stress levels in young people can lead to distressed behaviour - and how to manage both. We have left behind a time when schools found it easier to exclude difficult children than understand them, but the evolutionary and psychological factors that often underpin stress responses and their resulting problematic behaviours remain poorly understood.
Offering a complete, compassionate guide to what stress is, how it arises, the purpose it serves and the issues it can cause, Stan Godek argues for a trauma-informed approach of managing short-term distress while also reducing long-term stress levels via a regular practice of mindfulness - and shows how parents, carers, teachers and schools can help.
Managing Stress and Distress is for parents and carers; teachers, teaching assistants, early years practitioners, educational psychologists, school senior management teams and other education professionals; support groups; youth workers, group leaders and others interested in the wellbeing and socio-emotional development of children and young people.
Series Preface
About the Author
Authors Preface
How to Use This Book
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Stress and the brain
5. Key components of the brain
6. The HPA and stress chemicals
7. The negative impact of stress
8. Elizabeth Blackburn and the Telomere Effect
Part 3: Distress
9. The attachment process
10.The arousal response cycle
11. Emotional regulation or containment
12. Empathetic attunement, the secure base and exploratory behaviour
13. Internal working model
14. Distress and insecure attachment styles
Part 4: Managing distress
15. The arousal cycle
16. How to help at each stage
17. Nonverbal communication
18. Recovery and post-crisis
19. Analysis of incidents and looking after ourselves
Part 5: Stress and stages of development
20. Erikson’s stages of development
21. Pre-school to primary transition
22. Adolescence
23. Neuroplasticity
Part 6: Stress reduction
24. Chemicals again!
25. Mindfulness
26. Meditation
27. Breathing and breathing exercises
28. Imaging and visualisation
29. Shinrin-Yoku and Two Schools
Part 7: Conclusion
30. Summary
31. A last word to parents and carers
32. A last word to teachers and schools