Children's Coping Strategies Research Articles

Children's strategies for coping with adverse home environments: An interpretation using attachment theory

The coping strategies of four groups of maltreated children were compared with those of adequately reared children. The children were videotaped in a brief play session with their mothers, then in the Strange Situation, and finally during free play while the parent(s) were being interviewed. The coded videotapes of mother-child interaction yielded four scores for the children: cooperation, compulsive compliance, difficultness, and passivity. The coded videotapes of the Strange Situation yielded ten patterns of child attachment to the mother. The coded observations of play during the interview were analyzed in terms of seven child behaviors. The results indicated that abused, and abused-and-neglected children were difficult or compliant in interaction with their mothers, avoidant under stress, and aggressive with siblings; neglected children were cooperative in play with the mother, anxious under stress, and aggressive with siblings; adequately reared children were cooperative with both their mothers and siblings and secure under stress. Older children who had experienced abuse were less difficult and more compulsively compliant. Both marginally maltreated and adequately reared 1-year-olds were more difficult than either older or younger children from those groups but at all ages cooperation was the dominant pattern. The coherencies in the children's coping strategies were interpreted in terms of underlying internal representational models of relationships.

Coping strategies in children with cancer undergoing bone marrow aspirations.

Coping strategies in children with cancer undergoing bone marrow aspirations.

Identifying Coping Strategies in Children

This study attempted to identify coping strategies in children undergoing stressful dental treatment. Exploratory observations and interviews were conducted with children visiting the dentist. Based upon the coping and cognitive-behavioral literature and upon the exploratory data, nine categories of coping were identified. A Behavioral Coping Observation Scale and a Cognitive Coping Interview were then developed and administered to 30 children visiting the dentist, 8-10 years of age. Both scales were found to have good interrater reliability. Normative data are presented. All nine coping categories were represented in the sample, and every child utilized at least two cognitive coping responses and one behavioral coping response. The average child in the study employed a variety of coping strategies. There was a relationship between age and type of coping strategy used. Low correlations between individual cognitive coping categories and significant correlations between individual categories and total copin...

Coping In Hospitalized Children

This study examined the range of coping behaviors identified by the authors of 39 published case studies of hospitalized children age 20 months to 10 years and the pattern of coping revealed when the behaviors described in the published studies were analyzed according to the category system based on the Lazarus stress and coping paradigm. The behaviors reported in the case studies were subjected to a content analysis of the various labels attributed by the authors to the behaviors and then to a detailed content analysis according to the Type of Coping Behavior Category System. The range of labels of coping behavior used in the case studies showed that there had been no systematic and consistent approach to analysis of the children's coping strategies. The results of the analysis using the category system indicated that the coping strategies could be categorized in a systematic way. The pattern of coping revealed indicates that the system is sensitive to the influence of level of development.

The concepts of coping and vulnerability as applied to children with chronic conditions.

Much literature is available on children with chronic health problems; however, little attention has been given to the transaction between the individuals' coping strategies, levels of vulnerability, and the support or nonsupport of the environment, which help to determine their adaptation to living with a chronic condition. In this article the behavioral processes needed for coping and adaptation are viewed as a) seeking information, b) maintaining autonomy, and c) utilizing intrapsychic processes. Vulnerability is viewed as a dynamic continuum, affected by both constitutional and acquired factors. Clinical examples illustrate how chronic conditions can affect children's coping strategies and levels of vulnerability and influence their transactions with an environment that may offer varying levels of support.

The child sexual abuse accomodation syndrome

Child victims of sexual abuse face secondary trauma in the crisis of discovery. Their attempts to reconcile their private experiences with the realities of the outer world are assaulted by the disbelief, blame and rejection they experience from adults. The normal coping behavior of the child contradicts the entrenched beliefs and expectations typically held by adults, stigmatizing the child with charges of lying, manipulating or imagining from parents, courts and clinicians. Such abandonment by the very adults most crucial to the child's protection and recovery drives the child deeper into self-blame, self-hate, alienation and revictimization. In contrast, the advocacy of an empathic clinician within a supportive treatment network can provide vital credibility and endorsement for the child. Evaluation of the responses of normal children to sexual assault provides clear evidence that societal definitions of “normal” victim behavior are inappropriate and procrustean, serving adults as mythic insulators against the child's pain. Within this climate of prejudice, the sequential survival options available to the victim further alienate the child from any hope of outside credibility or acceptance. Ironically, the child's inevitable choice of the “wrong” options reinforces and perpetuates the prejudicial myths. The most typical reactions of children are classified in this paper as the child sexual abuse accomodation syndrome. The syndrome is composed of five categories, of which two define basic childhood vulnerability and three are sequentially contingent on sexual assault: (1) secrecy, (2) helplessness, (3) entrapment and accomodation, (4) delayed, unconvincing disclosure, and (5) retraction. The accomodation syndrome is proposed as a simple and logical model for use by clinicians to improve understanding and acceptance of the child's position in the complex and controversial dynamics of sexual victimization. Application of the syndrome tends to challenge entrenched myths and prejudice, providing credibility and advocacy for the child within the home, the courts, and throughout the treatment process. The paper also provides discussion of the child's coping strategies as analogs for subsequent behavioral and psychological problems, including implications for specific modalities of treatment.