Childhood Stress and Its Effects

Children seems to live stress-free lives. As a child, all you care about is playtime, food and friends. However, if children experience stressful situations, those may have an impact on their health later on in life.

Stressful experiences can be caused by physical abuse, abandonment, or divorce. Recent study was conducted and research shows that impaired immune function in adolescents can be caused by early childhood stress. According to author Seth Pollak, a professor of psychology and pediatrics at UW-Madison, "Even though these children's environments have changed, physiologically they're still responding to stress. That can affect their learning and their behavior, and having a compromised immune system is going to affect these children's health,"

Results shows that children who went through stressful conditions during their childhood posses weaker immune system compared to normal happy children. Weaker immune system puts the children at risk to more health problems that may pose long-term threat. Pollak added " "It suggests that children's emotional environments are having widespread repercussions on their health."

The bottom line is, as adults and parents of our children, we should make sure that our younger generation and our children lives a stress-free life to avoid early stressors that may cause long term hard to their health. We all need to practice responsible parenting.

Happy children means healthier adults.

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