Coping in middle childhood: Relations to competence, Type A behavior, monitoring, blunting, and locus of control.

The roles that social competence, Type A behavior, monitoring, blunting, and locus of control play in coping with everyday stressors was investigated. Forty-eight 2nd and 52 5th graders were interviewed individually 3 times over an 8-week period to assess perceptions of everyday stressors and associated coping behaviors. Teachers rated social competence and Type A behavior; the remaining predictors were self-reported at the start of the study. Results of multivariate analyses of variance revealed that except for Type A behavior, coping was associated with the predictors. Strongest associations were found for social competence, which was related to greater use of avoidant actions and cognitive avoidance and less use of problem behavior. The predictors were unassociated with ratings of coping efficacy. Research on coping among adults is several decades old, yet the investigation of children's coping is still in its infancy. Research on specific coping behaviors that children exhibit in stressful situations is particularly rare. By specific coping behaviors, I mean cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific demands that have been appraised as stressful (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). As noted by Lazarus and Folkman, this definition (a) stresses that coping is a process and, as a result, that one must examine what people actually do in certain situations; (b) implies that coping is a conscious, effortful response to a psychologically stressful situation; (c) permits coping to include anything a person does or thinks, regardless of how well or badly it works; and (d) avoids equating coping with mastery. Specific coping behaviors are distinguishable from coping