Kids Deal With Economic Woes In Their Own Way
As she clutches her unicorn’s mane and flees the evil dragon, the princess concentrates hard on her wish: that the king will free himself from the dungeon and rush to her rescue.

Her therapist, Dr. Eric Green, listens intently and then suggests that the fantasy be recreated with different sets of circumstances: what if the king is already free and able to save the princess? And then, what if it’s up to her to save herself?

Dr. Green’s client, 9-year-old Lindsey, is coping with the metaphorical dragon that has been breathing fire into thousands of young lives of late; as the economy has deteriorated and more parents face unemployment, loss of health insurance, and foreclosure, children are sharing in the consequences.

“When caretakers are in economic distress, the cascade of experiential anxiety eventually reaches the kids—kids who are often too young to comprehend the scope of what’s happening,” Dr. Green, associate professor and associate chair of The Chicago School’s Counseling Department, says. “Because they may not have a full understanding of what’s happening, they don’t know how to verbalize their fears and their feelings.”

Lindsey’s case is all too typical, he says. Her mother has lost her job, money is tight, and stress is playing havoc in their household. Through play therapy, Lindsey can create a world that is less threatening, a world in which she can attribute her anxieties to storybook characters rather than claiming them as her own.

“We stay with the metaphor they create,” says Dr. Green, who recently came to The Chicago School from Johns Hopkins University, where he developed a program in play therapy. “It allows children to see the world as safe, stable, and secure.”

Creating fantasies isn’t the answer for all children, though, especially those who have reached adolescence. Teens handle anxiety very differently, says Dr. Breeda McGrath, associate professor of school psychology at The Chicago School. They also understand the implications of financial loss in ways that smaller children cannot.

“For them, it’s often about the college fund. Their initial reaction might be frustration, then loss of self esteem, and then they need to find someone to blame, asking the parent who lost his job why he didn’t choose a different career.” The dangers for adolescents are greater too, Dr. McGrath adds.

“Once a kid is vulnerable, the options for anyone interested in making his life more difficult are broader. He might be more open to experimenting with drugs, for example.”

Play therapy is important in helping young children express their feelings.

In her role as a school psychologist at Glenview School District 34, Dr. Melissa Brown sees the stress many parents experience when confronted with decisions about additional services recommended for their children with special needs.

“It’s no longer an environment where parents say “we’ll just let the insurance pay for it’,” she says. “They really want to do right by their kids, but they’re worried about the co-pays.”

Long-term Consequences

While therapists, educators, and parents share a concern for what has been called the trickle-down effect that the recession is having on children, a longer-term worry hovers in the background: How will today’s crisis affect these same children as they grow up?

Psychologists Rand Conger and Glen Elder, who have spent decades tracking the long-term impact that the 1980s Iowa farm crisis had on the lives of children whose families were impacted, believes that the way parents handle economic crises is the single most critical determinant of how the children fare.

The difficulties that families experienced—which often included a drastic loss of income and forced relocation, often to the homes of relatives—left psychological scars that were apparent for years. Not surprisingly, children from the hardest-hit families tended to suffer academically, socially, and emotionally through adolescence and early adulthood. In turn, poor academic performance resulted in less rewarding and lower-paying jobs.

In follow-up studies of these families and others who have survived economic hardship, Dr. Conger—a distinguished professor of human development at the University of California-Davis—has found that the children who most successfully survived adversity were those with involved and caring parents.

A parent who is dealing with job loss may be using all of his cognitive resources just to cope, and has very little left over for the kids…And while kids don’t understand all of it, they know something is missing, they feel a sense of loss.

“The emotional stress that parents experienced took on many different forms, including depression, heightened anxiety, irritability, anger, and alienation,” Dr. Conger writes. “When that happens, it creates real havoc in family relationships.” He adds that parents who put family first and continued to communicate despite the hardship were able to relieve some of the long-term effects on their children.

“Children weren’t terribly bothered by not having a lot of stuff,” Conger says. “What bothered them was when their parents became angry and irritable and withdrawn.”

Dr. McGrath agrees that a parent’s frame of mind can be crucial in determining how children react.

“A parent who is dealing with job loss may be using all of his cognitive resources just to cope, and has very little left over for the kids,” she says. “And while kids don’t understand all of it, they know something is missing, they feel a sense of loss. Often they interpret it wrong, and think they’re at fault for what has happened with their family.”

School Responses

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) acknowledges that parental resilience is a critical factor in a child’s ability to cope, and has developed a series of resources for parents, which are posted on its website. Tips listed in a document, “Helping Children Cope in Unsettling Times: The Economic Crisis,” could have been written by Dr. Conger. They include suggestions such as acknowledging and normalizing children’s feelings, maintaining a normal routine, spending family time, and being optimistic.

Because schools frequently work the front lines, picking up the early signals when families are in crisis, NASP has responded to the deepening recession with a full-court press designed to support their member psychologists. The organization recently administered an email survey to members to accurately assess the impact schools were feeling.

“We were flooded with more than 700 responses—far more than any of our other surveys have ever received,” says Kathy Cowan, director of marketing and communications for NASP. “What struck me was the time so many school psychologists took to fill out the open comments section.” She describes the responses as “pretty consistent in their intensity,” citing increases in homeless students and transient families, and the need for more basic services.

“Some schools are opening up their locker rooms for students and families to shower,” Cowan says. “And I’ve heard stories about school nurses taking food that is left over from staff meetings and handing it out to kids to take home.” Dr. McGrath adds that many schools also watch for signs such as the increased use of breakfast programs so that they can make certain that those programs are strong enough to meet the greater demand.

High on the list of concerns that Cowan is hearing from NASP members is the potential for the elimination of many school psychology positions, and the impact such cuts would have on schools. Because the law requires the development of individual education programs (IEPs) for all special needs students, she explains, the fear is that when districts lose psychologists, those who are left may have time only for IEPs, leaving the mental health needs of other students unmet.

“There is a palpable strain on staff and teachers,” Cowan says. “Schools are dealing with a growing number of suffering families while also coping with decreased resources in their districts, and often their own crises as well. With budgets being cut and positions being lost, job security is an issue for everyone.”