Coping With Stress in Children

Unique stressors can prompt child adjustment difficulties. Coping strategies and emotion regulation that impact the adjustment of children in general and military family children were investigated. Eighty children, 36 with deployed parents, their parents and teachers participated. All experienced stress related to hurricane Katrina. Correlational analyses indicate that children with more hurricane-related losses or moves, use some coping strategies less often; hurricanerelated child distress is related to lower maternal support; and parental hurricane-related distress is associated with high levels of child externalizing problems. When dealing with general stressors, some coping strategies were positively associated with child internalizing problems. Analyses indicate that children with high emotion regulation and use of certain coping strategies experienced less externalizing problems, and children with deployed parents were not more emotionally dysregulated or maladjusted than children with non-deployed parents. Analyses did not confirm the hypothesized roles of parental support. Gender differences are also discussed.