Dose Of Stress

When I selected the category “Trauma, Children and Issues Related to Domestic Violence”, I did not expect the readings to be so relevant to the population of people I planned to work with this summer, young adults. As I read, however, I was greatly impressed and informed by the selected readings. The first reading and the one I found to be the most illuminating was article from the Center For Youth Wellness titled “An Unhealthy Dose of Stress”. If I were to have only read the title, I might have personally added “An Unhealthy Dose of Stress: Organic Chemistry 10171”. But that is not the type of stress this article focuses on. Instead, the article defines toxic stress as the “extreme, frequent or extended activation of the body’s stress

In explaining school-based arrests, she writes, “to arrest rather than see a teachable moment, to prosecute rather than resolve disputes”, these are the reasons why children are getting records and reputations even before they have made it to adulthood (Dohrn 550). Even more interesting, however, Dohrn makes the comment before, “One authority has replaced another” (Dohrn 550). Here, she is talking about how police forces have replaced school authorities, but if we go back one step further, school authorities replaced parents first. In the beginning, children should have been warned against these petty crimes, like shoplifting and breaking school rules with technology, by their parents. It is this first lapse, which allows for the lapse on the part of school authorities to occur, by which police forces step in to criminalize children in school settings. At the end of the day, however, children still are criminalized. If they are caught, they not only pay the price then but also for the rest of their lives. If they are already living hard lives, their lives only get harder. A quote in the “When Crises Collide” eloquently explains it, “being poor means, ‘going through life knowing that there is no safety net to catch you should you fuck up and fall.’” (Tea--Goodman 307). If a kid happens to make one mistake, it could wind up being fatal for his or