Allan Schore describes stress as a change or threat of change which demands adaptation by the organism. Elsewhere Schore describes stress as the occurrence of an asynchrony in a relational interaction in infancy (and indeed at later stages of life). A period of synchrony following the stress helps an infant recover. The sheltering of children from stress may be counter-productive for emotional development. Supporting Schore’s sentiment above, Ed Tronick has shown that interactive mismatches create stress in the caregiver-infant dyad, allow for the development of self-regulatory skills through repair of the rupture. Environment challenge, writes Schore, create opportunities for social adaptation. A challenge of previous functioning creates a new opportunity to advance adaptive and self-regulatory abilities.
Stress and self-regulatory capacity
