Our bodies, when functioning well, are amazing models of communication and collaboration. Not surprisingly, stress impacts that communication. Researchers at NYU College of Dentistry’s Pain Research Center conducted one animal study and two human studies exploring the impact of stress on children’s digestive systems. One of the human studies involved over 40,000 children and the other over 12,000 children. These two studies revealed that any adverse childhood experience (such as abuse, neglect, parental mental health challenges) has an impact on the digestive symptoms of 9- and 10-year-olds. The early stresses disrupted the gut-brain communication and impacted their gut. As a result, children who experienced any form of early stress showed an increased risk of gastrointestinal problems such as nausea and vomiting, constipation, colic (severe pain in the abdomen caused by gas or obstruction in the intestines), and irritable bowel syndrome.

I share this information so we might work to reduce the unnecessary stress in the lives of our children and our families; and, that we might encourage other families to do the same. Building our families on the foundation of honor, grace, and celebration provides a wonderful and effective way to reduce unnecessary stress in our children’s lives. How do we build our families on the foundation of honor, grace, and celebration? In many little ways. Let me list a few.

We can build on the foundation of honor by:

• Spending time with our families engaged in fun, interactive activities
• Serving our families by helping them with tasks around the house for example
• Sharing meals with our families
• Treating our families with kindness and politeness
• Expressing gratitude toward our family on a regular basis
• Learning about each family member’s life and dreams, friends, and activities
• Sharing appropriate physical affection
• Listening intently to understand our family members

We can build our families on the foundation of grace by:

• Being quick to apologize when we wrong a family member (either by accident or on purpose)
• Offering forgiveness when we perceive an offense of some sort from a family member
• Giving our family the best of our time
• Doing a chore for a family member

We can build our families on the foundation of celebration by:

• Developing rituals of connection when we meet after a day of work or school
• Developing traditions of celebrating effort as well as accomplishment
• Laughing together
• Eating meals together
• Going on vacation together

These are just a few of the ways you can begin to build a family on the foundation of honor, grace, and celebration. In doing so, you will not only reduce the stress in your family, but you will build your family’s resilience in the face of any unavoidable stress that might arise.