How to raise compassionate, resilient kids during stressful times, from a psychologist: You 'have a real job to do'

Many Americans have ample reason to feel stressed right now, from the tight job market to divisive politics and the general nature of the daily news.

If you're a parent, you may need to work a little harder than everyone else to manage that stress healthily, so you can avoid letting it accidentally affect your children, says developmental psychologist Aliza Pressman. That's especially true if you need to talk with your kids about a stressful piece of current events, so they can hear about it from you in an intentional way instead of picking it up elsewhere, she says.

"You're not going to be able to parent effectively — or have a close, connected relationship — if your system is in fight or flight [mode]. It just doesn't work," says Pressman, co-founder of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center and host of the "Raising Good Humans" podcast. "So it really serves every parent who's not actually in danger to remind themselves they're not in danger ... then, when you go into the room to talk to a child, they're not going to have that sense of panic."

Roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults are more stressed about the country's future than they used to be, according to a survey conducted on behalf of the American Psychological Association in August 2025. Parents can pass their own anxiety to their kids through a process called emotional contagion, research shows.