Weathering the Storm: Recognising Stress and Building Coping Skills
- Kelly Hutton
- Oct 16
- 5 min read
By Kelly Hutton
If you have ever found yourself negotiating with a toddler about putting their shoes on in January, you'll know parenting can sometimes feel like a full-contact sport. My youngest, for instance, used to make every school run an exercise in emotional endurance, shoes? No. Coat? Absolutely not. Tantrums? Loud, occasionally airborne (the toys, not the child).
And then there's the stage where an eight-year-old lies face-down in the middle of the floor, refusing to move, while everyone else has to step over them, like they have become part of the furniture. Or my teenager, who treats her desk as a shrine to the dirty glasses. There have been times where I have hidden in my bedroom, screaming into my pillow through my own frustration, reminding myself that I am the adult, even if it sometimes, it feels like only just.
Parenting is relentless, beautiful, and exhausting. It's also one of the most emotionally demanding jobs there is. Recognising that, and learning how to manage our own stress, is not a weakness, but wisdom born from the experience our children give us.
Recognising Stress and Why it Matters
The research shows us that our coping strategies directly shape our children's wellbeing. The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education highlights that coping skills are key to developing resilience and emotional regulation in children (Ronen, 2021; Fryden, Deans & Liang, 2021). In other words, when we learn to manage stress positively, our children learn from us, through the calm (and the chaos).
Equally, Managing Stress in Families (Fallon et al,. 1993) reminds us that family stress is rarely a single event, it's about how each member responds, how we communicate, and whether we approach problems as a team. When we respond with reflection rather than reaction, we teach coping, problem-solving, and empathy all at once.
Understanding Coping, For Us and Them.
Coping mechanisms fall broadly into two camps:
Problem-focused coping: where we try to change the situation (e.g. setting routines, using visual prompts, or offering structured choices).
Emotion-focused coping: where we work to manage our feelings about it (deep breaths, humour, stepping into another room before we say something we will regret).
Parents of children with additional needs often juggle both constantly. Research on parents of autistic children found that mothers tend to use emotion-focused coping more often, while fathers often use problem-focused coping (Al-Oran et al., 2022). Neither is right or wrong, balance is what matters. When one style takes over completely, this is when the stress levels rise for every one.
The Ripple Effect of Parental Coping
A 2025 study in Child Psychiatry & Human Development found that children whose parents had effective coping mechanisms show significantly fewer internalised symptoms such as anxiety, sadness, or withdrawal, even when those parents had experienced trauma or mental health difficulties themselves (DesRoches, et al., 2023).
That doesn't mean parents have to be endlessly calm or perfectly regulated (because realistically, who is?). It simply shows that the ways we can handle stress, even imperfectly, has a quiet but powerful influence on how our children learn to manage theirs.
Put simply: how we handle stress protects them.
Ho & Liang, (2021) similarly demonstrated that when parents took part in programmes designed to strengthen coping and confidence, both parents and children showed reduced anxiety and better overall wellbeing. In other words, the more supported and understood we feel, the more space we create for our children to feel the same, this is why you do have to be kind to yourself!
Parenting isn't about getting right every time, making mistakes we apologise for and correct teaches our children to be human. It is always about recovering, reconnecting, and choosing the route that does the least harm, even when it is messy.
Recognising Different Types of "Difficult Behaviour"
Children's challenging behaviours, however, are not all the same, and they often reflect their development stage or additional needs:
Toddlers: Testing boundaries, power struggles, sensory overload ("Shoes, I think not.")
School-age children: Defiance, avoidance, emotional meltdowns. ("I'm not eating dinner, and you can't make me")
Teenagers: Withdrawal, forgetfulness, selective hearing, and dramatic eye-rolling. ("What? I didn't see the 12 dirty glasses on my desk.")
In each stage, the child's brain is still developing the capacity for self-regulation. Our role is to lend them our calm until they build their own, and as a parent to two teenagers now, I get a glimpse every now and then of the maturity peeking through, and it does make me, o so hopeful that the learning is happening!
Practical Ways to Cope (Without Losing Your Mind)
Pause first. Step away if needed, shut yourself in the bathroom (if it is safe for your child to) or any place you can create space. Pause and find the reset button.
Name what is happening. "We're both frustrated right now." Acknowledging emotion defuses power struggles
Choose you focus. Problem solve once the storm has passed and things have calmed down.
Find patterns. Keep a note of triggers. The time of day, tiredness, transitions, and then you can understand and plan for them.
Model coping. When you breathe, apologise, or calmly say "I need a minute", your child learns what self-control looks like. You are not looking for perfection, just recovery.
Seek support. Friends, professionals, or simply other parents who "get it", coping grows with reflection and connection. We all need to blow off and vent from time to time, this is healthy!
The Real Lesson
When my youngest finally learnt to put his shoes on without a battle, it wasn't because of anything I directly taught him or the perfect parenting technique. It is because we had both learnt about regulation, him learning patience and me learning not to take the tantrum personally.
Any when my teen eventually goes to pour a drink and realises every glass is still in her room, well, that's a lesson in natural consequences (meanwhile, I stick to my trusty water bottle!).
Parenting isn't about removing the stress, but about learning how to bend with it and teaching your children how to have a healthy approach to it. Recognising your own actions, practise coping, and giving yourself the same compassion you offer your child, is how you both grow. Whilst all of this is never going to be perfect, it can't be, I leave this weeks blog with a poignant post I saw: "When it's not all going so well, just do what causes the least harm".
I hope you have found this reassuringly helpful, as was it's intention, please leave a comment on the socials about your thoughts or share with friends who might also need a little reminder that we are all in the same boat and it never has to be perfect.
References:
Al-Oran, H., Khuan, L., Ying, L.P., & Hassouneh, O. (2022). “Coping Mechanisms among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Iranian Journal of Child Neurology, 16(1), 9–17.
DesRoches, D. et al. (2023). “The Impact of Parental Mental Health Diagnoses, Trauma, and Coping Mechanisms on Children’s Well-Being.” Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 56, 1074–1082.
Falloon, I.R.H., Laporta, M., Fadden, G., & Graham-Hole, V. (1993). Managing Stress in Families. Routledge.
Frydenberg, E., Deans, J., & Liang, R. (2021). “Developing Coping Skills in the Early Years.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education.
Gulliford, H., Deans, J., Frydenberg, E., & Liang, R. (2015). Teaching Coping Skills in the Context of Positive Parenting within a Preschool Setting. Australian Psychologist, 50(3), 219–231.
Ho, M.Y. & Liang, S. (2021). “Emotion-Oriented Coping and Parental Competency.” Child & Family Social Work.
Ronen, T. (2021). “The Role of Coping Skills for Developing Resilience Among Children and Adolescents.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education. Springer.
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