Buffering Stress of Infant & Children
All children experience stress as a normal part of growing and learning. Stress can result from positive events as well as negative ones. Welcoming a new baby, for example, is a happy event that still causes stress because it disrupts the normal patterns of the family's life. Secure infant attachment may provide children with a crucial tool for dealing with stress by buffering their physiological reaction to novel or unexpected events , said Megan Gunnar, PhD, Of the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. The secure children seemed to be saying, 'This is scary but I feel safe. 'They had the resources to cope.' Secure attachments may act as a buffer against the stress of new, strange or scary events. Without that buffer , children find it difficult to cope and their bodies activate a stress reaction. Toxic stress has the potential to change your child's brain chemistry, brain anatomy and even gene expression. Toxic stress weakens the archite
