The Stress Effect: Why Children Need Peace to Learn

You may remember learning about voluntary versus involuntary actions in school. If you recall, your brain works day and night managing countless functions essential to your survival. You don’t consciously control these involuntary actions, but your brain takes care of them nonetheless. These automatic functions are most often controlled by the midbrain and hindbrain. But even within the more conscious thinking forebrain, not everything is under your control. Your subconscious brain is always working—moving and storing memories, evaluating input, processing and parsing information, learning and adapting. 

The Fight is On

Sometimes your brain is called upon to take care of you proactively. In an emergency situation, your brain goes on high alert, automatically shutting down some functions and transferring your energies to others. This is often referred to as a “fight or flight” reaction (Salzman & Fusi, 2010). This reaction is what makes stress and learning incompatible. Science tells us why this happens.

Blame your amygdala for this stress effect. The amygdala is a tiny part of your brain that acts as the ultimate gatekeeper. Information that wants to get to your prefrontal cortex, the conscious thinking part of your brain, has to make it past this little guy first. Any threat, real or perceived, causes the amygdala to spring into action, spurring your body to do the same. You literally cannot think because your amygdala doesn’t believe you have the time.  This phenomenon is now more commonly known as “the amygdala hijack” (Nadler, 2009).  

Calming the Storm

The good news is that you can learn to better control this reaction. Amazingly, researchers have found that once your brain identifies the threat and attaches a label to it, your amygdala begins to stand down (, your prefrontal cortex does get a say if the threat is perceived to be small. So children can be taught mindfulness techniques to calm their brains and put perceived threats into proper perspective during these amygdala overreactions (Hooker & Fodor, 2008).

To Improve School Life, Improve Home Life

Even if your brain isn’t totally overcome with fear, stress will still impede the learning process. This is true of adults and children alike. According to the National Institutes of Health, studies indicate that “finding ways to reduce stress in the home and school environment could improve children’s well-being and allow them to be more successful academically” (Wood, 2012).  

While the key research leading to this conclusion focused on childhood poverty, the National Institutes of Health when announcing the results of the study suggested that “other sources of stress may affect children in all income groups—for example, from divorce, harsh parenting, or struggles with a learning disability.” The release quotes Dr. James A. Griffen of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development who stated, “The conclusion from this body of work is that working to reduce inappropriate environmental stresses facing young children would not only improve their overall well-being but also improve their ability to learn in school” (National Institutes of Health, 2012).

Minimize the Stress Effect-

To help your child be at their learning best, it is important to eliminate or minimize stressors in their day to day lives.

References

 Hooker, K.E. & I.E. Fodor. (2008). Teaching mindfulness to children. Gestalt Review 12(1),  75-91.Retrieved from http://www.gisc.org/gestaltreview/documents/teachingmindfulnesstochildren.pdf

 Lieberman, M.D., N.I. Eisenberger,  M.J. Crockett, S.M. Tom, J.H. Pfeifer, & B.M. Way. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science 18(5), 421-428. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x.

 Nadler, R. (2009, July). What was I thinking? Handling the hijack. Retrieved from                 https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/51483/handling-the-hijack.pdf

 National Institutes of Health. (2012). Stresses of poverty may impair learning ability in young children: NIH funded research suggests stress hormones inhibit brain function, stifle achievement. Retrieved from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/stresses-poverty-may-impair-learning-ability-young-children

 Salzman, C. D. & S. Fusi (2010). Emotion, cognition, and mental state representation in amygdala and prefrontal cortex.  Annual Review of Neuroscience, 33, 173-202. doi: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.051508.135256

 Wood, J. (2012). Stress hampers kids’ learning ability. Psych Central. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/08/30/stress-hampers-kids-learning-ability/43909.html