The Taipei Municipal Tungmen Primary School has done a study of the pressures of daily life for elementary school children in Taipei City. Based on separate samples of 516 children from the Tungmen school, which is located in the city, and of 403 students from the suburban Yangmingshan area, they made two lists of concrete stresses (see Table 1).
On the lists there are the relatively traditional types of pressure, like examinations, illness, sibling rivalry, a lack of spending money, and so on. But there are also some unexpected ones, nay ones that are shameful--like noise, traffic congestion, environmental pollution, political demonstrations, and so on.
Competition at the root of stress: Naturally the term "pressure" or "stress" is rather abstract. The items on the list were selected beforehand. The ones a child chooses might merely reflect things that are annoying or inconvenient, but they still can accurately reflect the world as the child sees it. What kind of stresses does the adult manufactured world deliberately or inadvertently place on children?
"There is a commercial slogan--'Don't let your child fall behind at the starting line.' This is the classic description of the pressures on the modern child," points out Liang Pei-yung, a psychology graduate student at National Taiwan University who has been involved in child education for several years. English lessons at three, music or arts classes at five, a multi-vitamin every Say, giving the child a health drink to take along with them . . . . Given these habits, few parents will take the time to consider whether or not the child is enjoying what he is studying or what she is eating. Their only focus is "competition."
Liang, who has worked in the Yu Yuan Foundation for four years and come in contact with all kinds of children, makes a case in point: The fifth grade child of a certain family in Nankang had to spend two whole night s a week going back and forth to class because the famous abacus teacher his mother had found for him was located in the distant suburb of Shilin. The pitiable child would spend a day in class with abacus study at night and often fall asleep on the bus home. The bus driver would have to wake him up at the last stop so that he could change buses for the ride home. After getting home the child would still have to catch his second wind and prepare his homework for the next day: "Every time Daddy works overtime he is very tired and loses his temper. Why doesn't Mom think for a minute that my overtime is even more tiring than Dad's?" he asks.
Because they have this fixation on "winning is the only thing," no wonder the parents have "excessive expectations" of their children. "This is especially the case given the small number of children in the modern family, so the parents concentrate all of their attention on one or two kids. This attention and these expectations constitute the greatest source of pressure for many children," says Ko Hua-wei, associate professor of psychology at Chung Cheng University in Chiayi.
Parents are the biggest source of stress: As for problems of the parents themselves--divorce, remarriage, alcoholism, domestic violence -- it seems these have still not become a source of pressure on children comparable to the West.
In several studies done in the US in the 1970's about the sources of stress for children, it can be seen that the death of the parents, divorce, separation, and arguments are indisputable sources of fear for America n children. Today the fear is even greater. In Taiwan, based on the case of the survey at the Tungmen Primary School, 2.5% of the respondent students came from single parent households. The percentage at the suburban school reached ten percent. This is not a very high ratio, and it did not break into the "top ten" sources of stress.
"This factor is perhaps underestimated, but in Taiwan, even if the mother or father is not around, the grandparents or other relatives are there to help out. That reduces the shock to the child somewhat," explains Ms. Ko.
According to statistics, more than 50% of the sources of stress for modern children come from "parental items." Besides parents, the second most important source of pressure for modern children comes from none other than school.
Getting ahead in school above all--grades before everything: In a small scale survey conducted jointly by this magazine and the Fine Arts Advanced Class at the Min-tzu Primary School, more than thirty children painted pictures on the theme "The thing which I feel gives me the most pressure and makes me most unhappy." Of them, eleven selected "examinations" or "homework."
When you get into it, the history of homework stress for kids goes back the same distance as Taiwan's "promotionism" education system. Many older teachers, using as their standard the cramming style of the 1960's, believe that today's children really "have it too easy." Is that really true? Do today's children really "not know how good they've got it"?
"If the system of large classes continues unchanged, there will never be any method for respecting the individual differences among children. The stresses children get from school can thus not be reduced," notes Chou Yan-wen, general editor of Thoughts on Education, which records the growth process at the Senlin Elementary School.
For example, if a child's basic ability is to score a 60, then the reasonable thing to do is to encourage him or her to strive for the target of 65. But in large classes, in an environment with fifty or sixty students, the teacher might simply--in the interests of saving time or of fairness--choose the method of corporal punishment of "hitting beginning at ninety, with one rap on the knuckles for each point below." What a child might get for trying as hard as she can is sore hands, and even education specialists can't come up with a way to get this child to overcome disappointment and keep trying.
With the pressures of examinations unavoidable, interpersonal relations are yet another new variable in the stresses of children.
The pressures of early socialization: Here is an actual example: A twelve year old invited ten friends to go to a restaurant on the night before graduation to celebrate. But because her father only gave her NT$1000 (about US$40), she couldn't go herself, and afterward her classmates called her to come over and settle the bill, and they all went home together! It's hard to believe, but it really happened.
"The tragedy of many contemporary children," says family specialist Yu Chien-kui, is that if they aren't only children then there is a huge gap between siblings, and they can't play together. Add to this that there are few playmates in apartment style housing, and the result is that the child places all of its friendship in school classmates, and will do anything to please them.
And if shunned or frozen out, that's the greatest frustration in the world of small children.
Interaction with peers is an essential stage in the process of child socialization. The child must mostly find the way by himself or herself, and there are few places the parents can help out. Yet, besides this "socialization," many problems and conditions of adult society penetrate rapidly to the child through the parents or school, creating additional stress for the child.
In the film My Love, the nervous-wreck mother locks the doors tight as soon as she gets in the house, and hesitates before answering the intercorn. In the eyes of the audience, this type of behavior resonates. Naturally, the children are especially deeply affected by parental concern about crime and safety. A little boy studying in the fifth grade at the Neihu Primary School invariably brings a toy gun to school each day: "If I run across any bad guys, I have a gun to kill them," he says, posturing like the Hongkong film star Liu Teh-hwa.
Further, "for some time there were many cases of kidnapping of school children, and many schools added safety classes, and did reenactments, such as what to do if you meet someone talking crazily in the street, or to not go near cars of strangers while walking on the street so that it won't happen that suddenly the door opens and a sinister hand reaches out . . . ." describes Tsao Tsung-wei, who teaches elementary school guidance at the Taipei City Teachers' College. This type of play-acting seems fun, but it makes many children afraid to walk home at night.
Global disasters in the eyes of a child: The problem of crime creates stress for kids that their "very existence is threatened." Even disasters that happen in faraway lands can leave an ineradicable impression on the hearts and minds of children through the modern media.
Taking for example the serious earthquake in San Francisco two years ago, television the world over continually broadcast a scene of a moving car that had been "consumed" by a suddenly shattered bridge. This caused many children in distant Taiwan to be unwilling to go in a car across an overpass. Yu Chien-kui points out that after the earthquake happened, the San Francisco city government specially organized a "Committee for Child Psychological Recovery," which travelled to each primary school and encouraged the children to express through words or games the horrible images they had seen. After the explosion of the space shuttle, the American government undertook a similar program. Little did anyone think that the small children in other lands were also hurt.
Many surveys reveal that many children have a far deeper fear of nuclear power, the erosion of the ozone layer, or nuclear war than most adults realize.
If you get to the root cause, perhaps small children are weak and helpless, so they are more likely to instinctively fear fate. The things parents warn about or that are seen on TV are exaggerated many times over in the brain of the child. Moreover, in the past children were several levels removed from society, and many bits of information only reached the child after being selected by the parents or teacher. But today there is a TV and newspaper in every household, and children can see all kinds of horrifying and sickening sights, which will of course create anxiety and become a source of stress in everyday life.
Besides major problems which can threaten existence, there are many trivial problems in modern society which can annoy a child. As the Tung-men survey showed, traffic, noise, pollution, and political demonstrations already constitute another source of stress in the daily life of the urban child. The noise and traffic control of demonstrations create inconveniences, schools next to overpasses have had to erect double-layered noise barriers, children in schools in industrial zones have to wear filters over their mouths or do an emergency evacuation if a nearby factory emits some chemical . . . .
Although these problems are "not the child's fault" and will not create psychological harm such as causing the child to blame him or herself or generating lack of self-esteem, having some immediate threat to life and limb will still bring on anger and anxiety.
Like father, like son? "When children reach the fifth or sixth grade, they will have an especially powerful sense of right and wrong," points out Chen Chiao-mei. Sometimes they see that an adult clearly understands that what is being done is against the law or dangerous, but they go right ahead and do it. Inevitably this will create confusion and unhappiness, and the child will wonder how adults can be so selfish and not respect the child's right to exist. Many a parent will be reminded by the child next to them when they go over the speed limit or pass illegally when driving, revealing the degree of concern children have about such matters.
The failure of adults to obey the rules is also reflected on the political level. "Fighting in the Legislative Yuan" is the thing children most love to imitate. Also, at election time, there might be a difference of political opinion between the teacher and the parents, which will leave the child in the middle wondering where to turn. "In the past people said to always respect your teacher, and parents rarely criticized the teacher in front of the children. But today, if it's something 'political,' then there might be many differences of opinion, and this will naturally create pressure on the child," points out Ko Hua-wei.
When you put it this way, are children today not being "socialized" a bit too soon? Huang Lun-fen argues that this is not necessarily the case: "In the agricultural society of the past, a seven-or eight-year-old-child would have to do farm labor, and do the work of playing servant to visiting neighbors, and they became 'adults' even earlier than today's children."
The only thing is, agricultural societies are extremely simple, and socialization was limited to the family and neighborhood. Modern society is highly complex, and exceeds in both scope and depth anything people of the past could even imagine. Thus the stresses on the children are significantly different.
Be alert for early warning signs: The three elements of home, classroom and society together constitute an interlocking network of stress, with the child wrapped tightly inside it. The problem is that, in addition to external pressures, children also face so-called "developmental" pressures deriving from their own bodies and minds.
"Growing up is in itself a type of stress. For children who grow up especially fast in all ways, this type of pressure is without doubt startling," states Yu Chien-kui.
Smaller children are afraid of the dark, afraid of ghosts, afraid of dogs, afraid of snakes (even if they've never even seen a real snake!), and afraid of being separated from mother or going to school alone--the so-called "fear of separation." A little older and they worry about whether they are too short, or wet the bed, or they feel the frustration of stuttering. And when the first pimple appears, or the first period or nocturnal emission, then another concern and stress has begun.
There are a great diversity of sources of stress, "and since children have only limited abilities and experience, they don't really understand pressure and don't know how to deal with it, or even react in a way that angers and confounds adults," notes Huang Lun-fen, vice-director of the Yu Yuan Foundation.
For example, if there's a big traffic jam, an adult might just pull over and have something to eat to kill time, but a child can only sit and stew. Or when the monthly examinations come, the child might be unable to express his anxiety and fear, but gets out of school with biological conditions like a stomachache or diarrhea. Some children will even be irritable, mischievous, or procrastinating or exhibit other such negative behaviors to vent their dissatisfaction. Or they might refuse to speak frankly with their parents and allow themselves to fall into depression or a sense of helplessness, which will make the parents even more vexed and angry. They will assume their child is deliberately acting strangely, and will ignore the background factors.
"When children show any kind of strange condition, parents have to be careful. This is 'advance warning' that the child needs help," points out Yu Chien-kui, who has been practicing clinical child psychology for many years.
In recent years, there has been a trend of an increasing number of cases of children seeking psychological help, although superficially "child stress" is not enough to cause any severe problems. "Nevertheless, many studies testify that if children cannot ease the stress in a timely fashion, it will build up until adolescence or adulthood and could result in all types of anti-social behavior or mental illness," says Yu. It was when he discovered that 80 to 90% of adult patients with psychological problems had unhappy childhood experiences that he decided to devote himself to parental education, keeping in mind that "prevention is more important than treatment."
Have today's children forgotten how to play? What is to be done? Pressures naturally need to be vented. Many adults understand that they can vent their own stresses by exercise, going on vacation, going for a hot springs bath, meditation, or going to the local pub with coworkers. But when you ask how they can relieve pressure on the child, many parents have never even seriously considered the question.
"In fact, children have even simpler ways for venting pressure than adults, summed up in two words--'play' and 'talk' notes Liang Pei-yung." The responsibility for these types of release cannot be placed on teachers; parents must still accept the vast majority.
Of course, "play" here does not mean that the parents should meticulously choose a summer camp or overseas travel for their child. It means having truly non-structured play where the child can make his or her own decisions, there is no forced humor, there is no learning objective, and there are no time pressures.
"When we were small we really knew how to play--catching mantises, catching fish, playing martial arts with the neighboring kids . . . and all your problems would disappear," says Liang, clapping her hands. "But what about children today?"
In apartment house residences, everyone keeps their doors locked and there is little socializing. The kids are in their piano or painting classes or off at supplementary school at different times, and it's hard for them to just get out of school and hang around together. And when you add to this the explosive number of automobiles and the entry of crime and sex into residential areas, even more parents are unwilling to let their child play around in the street. Time and space are beinsqueezed, and there is no place to find friends. The child's instinct to play can only be released with a mind numbing, non-creative video game or a shallowly glamorous Barbie doll.
Confronted with this modern tragedy, "parents can take the initiative to set up some play opportunities," suggests Yu Chien-kui. Going to play ball with the child, taking the child to the suburbs to walk around, or raising a little pet . . . these are all good ways. It's just that the parents have to be clear about the purpose--playing is playing, and parents should not stress "education through enjoyment." The child will be able to figure it out, and it too will become troublesome pressure.
Child stress is a mirror for adults: Compared to "playing with the child," "listening to what the child has to say" has an even greater importance that cannot be compensated for by any third party. What's regrettable is that not only do most parents not take the time and energy to listen to their child, they don't even understand what it means to listen or how to respond.
In many years at the Yu Yuan Foundation, it is really moving how many cases of "poor parent-child communication" Huang Lun-fen has seen (please see the article "Are You a Source of Stress--or Support--for Your Child?"). "In fact children don't ask for much. If there's simply someone there to listen patiently to what they have to say, to absorb what they are feeling and give them some sympathy and encouragement, they will naturally become more self-confident and happier, and also more able to deal with stress and frustration."
Besides "play" and "talk," perhaps the best way to deal with problems in the larger environment like pollution or traffic is to "lend a hand and do something."
"When they face such problems, many people--both children and adults--will feel passive and impotent. If you want to overcome them, the only thing to do is take the initiative and act," says Chen Chiao-mei. She takes the example of teaching the child to separate out different types of trash, or going to a wild bird sanctuary to observe and take notes. These activities will enable the child to feel like he or she is making a contribution, and they also help to relieve stress.
An appropriate amount of pressure increases incentives and is helpful in stimulating potential. Childhood stress is a reflection of adult society. Today children are confronted with a myriad assortment of pressures. Can't adults learn something from all of this?
[Picture Caption]
Just write what you think and then go up on stage to make a report; this approach makes shy children panicky.
"My child, I want you to do better than I did!" Unrestrained expectation is written on the faces of parents. (Sinorama file photo)
Are today's children really so lucky? Unfortunately they also have things to complain about.
It's not unusual to see primary students learning English, but it's only truly trendy with a foreign instructor.
"Try harder, bend a little!" Homework is important, yet the arts cannot be neglected.
Growing up in clean, trouble-free surroundings is every child's dream. ( photo by Diago Chiu)
"Education through enjoyment"--occasional trips to museums are part of the school curriculum. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
The tides of time have carried away many a hero of old--can they do the same for the stresses and worries of childhood? (photo by Pu Hua-chih )
Going to play in a mountain stream can temporarily erase daily worries. (photo by Vincent Chang)
Appropriate pressure can stimulate potential; it is necessary to keep progressing in life. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
After leaving school, how many students will remember all these rules and regulations?
Table of Sources of Stress for Urban and Suburban Children[Picture]
Source: The Taipei City Education Research Center, June 1991.
Just write what you think and then go up on stage to make a report; this approach makes shy children panicky.
"My child, I want you to do better than I did!" Unrestrained expectation is written on the faces of parents. （Sinorama file photo）
Table of Sources of Stress for Urban and Suburban Children[Picture] Source: The Taipei City Education Research Center, June 1991.
Are today's children really so lucky? Unfortunately they also have things to complain about.
It's not unusual to see primary students learning English, but it's only truly trendy with a foreign instructor.
"Try harder, bend a little!" Homework is important, yet the arts cannot be neglected.
Growing up in clean, trouble-free surroundings is every child's dream. （ photo by Diago Chiu）
"Education through enjoyment"--occasional trips to museums are part of the school curriculum. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
The tides of time have carried away many a hero of old--can they do the same for the stresses and worries of childhood? （photo by Pu Hua-chih ）
Going to play in a mountain stream can temporarily erase daily worries. （photo by Vincent Chang）
After leaving school, how many students will remember all these rules and regulations?
Appropriate pressure can stimulate potential; it is necessary to keep progressing in life. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
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