The self-driven child - chapter 1: the most stressful thing in the universe

The goal of this book is to teach parents how to help kids increase their stress tolerance - the ability to perform well in a stressful situation and to throw off stress rather than accumulate it

Our role as adults is not to force our children to follow the track we've laid out for them. It's to help them develop the skills to figure out the track that's right for them. They will need to find their own way and to make the independent course corrections - for the rest of their lives

Source of stress

• Novelty: something you have not experienced
• Unpredictability: something you had no way of knowing would occur
• Threat to the ego: your safety or competence as a person is called into question
• Sense of control: you feel you have little or no control over the situation

Types of stress

• Positive stress: motivates you to grow, take risks and perform at a high level. nervous, a little stressed, then filled with a sense of accomplishment and pride afterward

• Tolerable stress: occurs for relatively brief periods, can also build resilience. There must be supportive adults, and kids must have time to cope and recover.

• Toxic stress: prolonged activation of the stress system in the absence of support

It's all your head

The pilot (the executive control system)

• governed by the prefrontal cortex, which needs just the right combination of chemicals -- neurotransmitters, dopamine, and norepinephrine. 
• mild stress, excitement, and mild pretest jitters can result in sharper focus, clearer thinking and stronger performance
• sleep deprivation or too much stress will cause the pilot taken off-line

The lion fighter (the stress response system)

• amygdala - primitive emotional processing center, sensitive to fear, anger, and anxiety. It doesn't think consciously. It senses and reacts. 
• threat -> sensed by amygdala -> send signal to hypothalamus and pituitary -> wakes up adrenal gland -> secrets adrenaline (stress hormone) -> act without conscious thought
• healthy stress response: quick spike in stress hormones followed by a quick recovery
• chronic stress: adrenal gland secrets cortisol which is slower to come on board but stay for a long-term battle. 
• cortisol kills cells in the hippocampus. hippocampus is where memories are created and stored, and it helps turn off the stress response. and Chronic stress enlarges the amygdala, increases your vulnerability to fear, anxiety and anger.

The cheerleader (the motivational system)

• It's all about dopamine. anything you experience as rewarding leads to a higher level of dopamine. low dopamine levels are associated with a low drive, low effort, and boredom. 
• Under chronic stress, dopamine levels go down, and you lose your motivation.

The buddha (the resting state)

• only when we are doing nothing, sitting with our own thoughts, a complex and highly integrated network in the brain activates.
• this state is necessary for the human brain to rejuvenate, store information in more permanent locations, gain perspective, process complicated ideas, and be truly creative. It has also been linked in your people to the development of a strong sense of identity and a capacity for empathy

Stress, anxiety, and depression

• chronic stress -> the amygdala becomes bigger and more reactive than it should be + prefrontal cortex cut off -> you have a hard time distinguishing between things that are threatening and things that are not -> anxiety
• chronic stress -> a feeling of helpless that you just cannot accomplish a task when in reality you could do it very capably -> sleeping problems, procrastination etc -> dopamine level falls -> depression

When brains are most sensitive to stress:

• prenatal: highly stressed pregnant women tend to have children who are more responsive to stress
• early childhood, when neural circuits are particularly malleable
• adolescence: 12-18, most vulnerable to stress and fewer tools to deal with
• depression leaves "scars" in the brain. a single major depression in adolescence, even fully recovered, makes one vulnerable to have a depression again later in life.
• cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex don't mature until 25, and emotional control functions follow at 32!

Takeaway

• let children take over her life as much as possible
• give children choices in your language
• observe if your child is anxious
• teach your child to identify the source of stress and label them
• let her know you have confidence in her ability to handle the stressors in her life
• don't overprotect
• measurement of sense of control:
• adults: rotter scale
• kids: steven nowicki and bonnie strickland