This essay deals with the issue of children and stress, and the impact that stress can have on children. The purpose has been to explore how I, in my role as teacher, can prevent children from developing stress in preschool, and how I can prevent stress to develop inside of my own department. My essay is structured as follows: First, I describe my practical work with children. Then I analyze some research literature on stress, and finally I reflect over what I have described earlier and try to connect the practical with the theoretical.

In the practical part of this essay I describe the various events that I have observed during my work in preschool, where I have seen how stress can affect both children and teachers. Then I describe how the increasing size of children’s groups can create stress because of the noisy environment of the department. Moreover, I discuss how children are being negatively affected by their parents’ separation, and how we as teachers are performing under such circumstances. The questions I focus on are: How can we help both the children and ourselves to handle this problem? How can I as a teacher prevent stress? And what do scientists believe that stress is?

By grounding these questions in the research literature I have expanded my understanding of what the definition of stress really means, and I have gained new insight about how teachers can prevent stress to develop in the preschool environment. In the reflection part of this essay I discuss the various symptoms that stress can cause according to the research literature and connect these theories with my practical work experience with children.