How to Feel Better When it Feels Bad: Children's Perspectives on Coping With Everyday Stress

When confronted with stress, adults tend to respond with primary control coping (trying to change the stressful circumstances), secondary control coping (trying to adjust to circumstances as they are), or relinquished control (trying neither to change circumstances nor to adjust to them). Applying this notion to children, we asked 6-, 9-, and 12-year-olds to recall stressful episodes involving six different situations (e. g., separation, medical stress, school failure) and to describe how they responded in each instance. Responses were coded as primary or secondary coping or as relinquished control. The responses indicated reports of active coping; only 3.5% of all descriptions involved relinquished control. Styles of coping, however, differed across situations, with school failure evoking high levels of primary coping and medical stress, high levels of secondary coping. Styles also differed with age: As age increased, self-reports of primary coping declined and of secondary coping increased, particularly in stressful medical circumstances. Overall, the results suggest that elementaryschool children report that they cope with everyday stress and that their coping approaches are influenced by situational constraints and cognitive development.