Core Concept #3: Toxic Stress Derails Healthy Development--A Closer Look

An important part of healthy early development is learning how to cope with stress and adversity. A physiological response naturally occurs when children are threatened. Their bodies prepare them to respond by making their hearts beat faster, raising their blood pressure, and flooding them with stress hormones. If supportive adults respond appropriately, all these systems drop back down to normal levels (para. 2).

However, if no caring adult helps the child respond to the stressor that continues to be present over an extended time, healthy neural connections are interrupted as the child goes into fight, flight, or freeze mode in an attempt to cope with the situation independently. When this happens, you may see the child become aggressive or violent, run away and hide, or simply "shut down" and be unable to respond or engage with you. These are not uncommon responses for children who are faced with stressful or unsafe situations. Can you think of a time when a child you were working with responded in such a way? What did you do to help the child calm down and feel safe?

It is impossible to completely eliminate stress from our lives or the lives of the children we serve, but we can gain a deeper understanding of the physiological responses we have to it and learn strategies to help children cope in healthy ways. The Center's article (2014e) emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between three types of responses to stress: positive stress response, tolerable stress response, and toxic stress response. (These terms refer not to the stressful event itself, but to what takes place in our bodies when we are faced with different stressful situations [para 3]).

When a child is in a new situation, such as the first day of school or a visit to the doctor's office, he or she may experience a positive stress response. This is a perfectly normal and essential part of healthy development as a child grows up. The positive stress response is characterized by brief increases in heart rate and mild elevations in hormone levels. In such situations, the child can usually be calmed fairly easily with the support of a caring adult. If you are an educator or care provider for young children, you have probably witnessed such scenarios when children are being dropped off in your care and parents are preparing to leave.
If something more significant and stressful occurs, such as an illness or death of a loved one, a car accident, or natural disaster of some kind, the tolerable stress response may be activated to alert the body to more severe, longer-lasting difficulties. If the activation of this response system is relatively brief and is ameliorated by caring adults who can comfort the child and help the child cope with the situation, the brain and other organs recover from what might otherwise be damaging effects.

Toxic stress response occurs when a child experiences intense, frequent, or prolonged adversity, such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, poverty, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, or exposure to violence, without adequate support from a caring adult. Prolonged activation of the toxic stress response systems can interrupt neural connections and disrupt the development of healthy brain architecture. Toxic stress can also impair cognition, impact other organ systems, and increase the risk for stress-related diseases well into the adult years Center on the Developing Child, 2014e).

Now for the good news! Research demonstrates that consistent, responsive relationships with caring adults early in life can prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress response—another reason high-quality early care is so critical (Center on the Developing Child, 2014e, para. 4)!

Did you realize that YOU have the ability to prevent or reverse damaged brain architecture in young children? Think about that for a moment, and reflect on the importance of the job that early childhood educators and care providers do each day.

The Center's article on toxic stress (2014, para. 2) states, “Healthy development in the early years provides the building blocks for educational achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, strong communities, and successful parenting of the next generation.” Clearly, those devoting their lives to young children—whether in the role of parent, educator, or care provider—play a significant role in this important developmental process that lays the foundation for all of life.

As you can see, critical brain circuitry is being shaped, and healthy brain architecture is developing as young children have ongoing positive interactions with kind, responsive adults each day. These caregiving relationships are crucial and form the very foundation of mental health for infants and toddlers, as well as the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health across their lifespan (Center on the Developing Child, 2011).