Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids

by Kim John Payne

The level of stress described by the term CSR, in its frequency, is very different from the stresses that occur quite regularly and normally in a child’s everyday life. In day-to-day life a child’s moods and well-being are like a seesaw; stress acts like a weight on one end, but once the stress is gone the overall balance returns. The “gift” of a scraped knee, an argument with a friend, five days flat out with the flu—these can strengthen a child’s resilience and their awareness of their own abilities. Such normal stresses are examples of “necessary resistance.” We all, including children, need to meet resistance in life in order to learn how to understand it, work through it, and move on. Such stresses may be worrying, but not damaging if we learn we have the skills and the support to deal with them, and move beyond them. Stress that is damaging is either too large, or too constant to move beyond. If our abilities (or a child’s abilities) can’t match it, then he or she can’t understand it, or work through it, and they become stuck in a reoccurring cycle of stress reactions.