How challenge can reduce stress

A while ago I worked with a family with a young girl who had completely turned off learning at school (at home it was a different story although she was selective in her interests and increasingly preferred to know she would succeed even at home). Her teachers were concerned about her anxiety levels and the way she was (not) coping with year level content.

After a thorough investigation looking at potential, achievement levels and other background information the family arranged for their daughter to be accelerated to the next year level. The change of expectations, finding the bar had been raised (along with an expectation that she could manage the work at that level) and being offered more meaningful challenge led to higher achievement levels as we expected but also to her parents noticing that her stress levels reduced and that she was coping better, even at the times when things were not still challenging enough. Had the focus simply been on the emotional state of the child without an appreciation of what might be happening at a chemical level in her brain, the opportunity she needed to turn things around might have been denied.

Making decisions about what is best for a child does need to include the whole child, but it also needs to consider the whole picture. Focussing on one aspect without consideration of it’s place in the whole is a bit like putting a band aid on a blister but not removing the stone from your shoe.