After plaguing adults for decades, stress has spread to kids. But the real experts are children themselves.
Children report the most stress when parents fight or lose control.
To find out what they say about stress, I polled more than 700 youngsters under 12 through the Prodigy computer service. More than 600 parents also responded to a companion survey asking them to guess what children would say. Kids worry about grades, tests, homework, flunking, project deadlines, final exams and teachers, in that order. Worrying about family and parents - health, money, moods, marriages. Peer pressures, such as bullies, gangs, popularity contests, fickle friends and teasing.