Children (4-13)

Even the most nurturing home and school environment includes a range of stressors that can both challenge and motivate children. While stress is a necessary part of development and learning, it’s clear that Canadian families now face more stress than ever before.

With the help of a range of educators, psychologists and stress experts from across the country, we developed the Kids Have Stress Too! ®program. The program is designed to help the important people in children’s’ lives learn to promote resiliency by buffering the impact of stress, and building positive coping strategies to deal with life’s stressors. The program includes:

• Kids Have Stress Too!® Parent Program: Delivered by trained facilitators, or delivery partners, in communities across Canada. Delivery partners include local public health, social services, community agencies, and children's mental health organizations. Program Evaluation: findings reveal that the participants indicated a considerable increase in their knowledge of stress, their understanding of their children’s reaction to stress as well as their ability to help their children cope with stressful experiences. See full program evaluation from York University

• Kids Have Stress Too!® Kindergarten and Preschool Program:   Provides a comprehensive introduction to key aspects of early childhood and brain development, as well as the crucial role caregivers and educators play in helping children learn effective stress-management strategies. Designed to meet the needs of early childhood educators and kindergarten teachers, the program contains practice and curriculum-based strategies to help young children learn how to manage stress. Program Evaluation: The evaluation demonstrated that students successfully learned and applied the content of KHST! to help them recognize and understand stress in children  See preschool evaluation summary by University of Western Ontario

• Kids Have Stress Too!® Tools and Activities for Classrooms Grades 1 to 3:  Provides educators with strategies to help create an emotionally-healthy environment in their classroom by promoting self-regulation and effective stress-management skills and strategies. Read more on program details.

• Stress Lessons® for Grades 4 to 6: Provides educators with practical, developmentally appropriate, engaging activities for students aged 9 to 12. Stress Lessons is a resource designed to help you teach children how to manage stress today, and for the rest of their lives. Whether you're teaching students grade 4 to 6, or simply want to help your son or daughter, this program will help you introduce your children to the topic of stress in a fun and engaging way. Read more on program details.
  
  
•  Stress Lessons® From Stress Out to Chilled Out for Grade 7 to 9:  Provides educators with a student-centred inquiry-based approach to teach stress-management strategies and skills and build emotional resiliency in their students and themselves. Program Evaluation: The program was found to have a positive impact on students. See full program evaluation from Ryerson University

You can see a series of preschool videos, school age videos or stress lessons videos that will introduce more key concepts of the programs and some tips and strategies to help our kids handle stress.

Learn more about Kids Have Stress Too!® training here. We can provide you with information on how to offer you training in your community. See our vast network and facilitators

Email us for information on training available in your community: brianaleal@psychologyfoundation.org or mandihickman@psychologyfoundation.org

Resources: program guides. Buy your resources now Electronic or Print