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We’re all feeling more financial stress these days—whether it’s loss of a job or other income, mounting bills and floundering home prices, or just seeing other family and friends deal with the economic downturn. It’s no surprise that our stress is rubbing off on our kids–and psychologists and pediatricians are warning that can have significant consequences.

New results from an annual survey by the American Psychological Association—appropriately called “Stress in America”–show that kids “absolutely” feel their parents’ stress, and parents don’t always know that their children are picking up on it.

The APA reports that teenagers and tweens (children ages 8-12) were more likely than parents to say that their stress had increased in the last year.

Forty-five percent of teens ages 13-17 said that they worried more this year, but not all of their parents were aware of that, as only 28 percent of parents reported that their teen’s stress increased, according to the survey.

A quarter, 26 percent, of tweens said they worried more this year, but only 17 percent of parents believed their tween’s stress had increased. And while only 2-5 percent of parents rated their child’s stress as “extreme,” 14 percent of tweens and 28 percent of teens said that they worry a lot or a great deal, the APA reports.

Of course, this has ramifications for schools, as stress can trigger issues ranging from a lack of engagement in learning to substance abuse problems.

“What we’re seeing with stress is in line with existing research about parents’ perception of their kids’ engagement in risky behaviors,” psychologist Katherine C. Nordal, APA’s executive director for professional practice, says in a press release. “Parents often under report drug use, depression and sexual activity in their children. Now it appears the same may be true for stress.”

The APA report comes a day after another report shows that half of all children will, at some point before age 20, live in a household that receives food stamps, including 90 percent of all African-American children.

Households tend to use the federal assistance for relatively short periods, but what sociologists call “food insecurity” may become a persistent and recurring theme over the course of a childhood, according to the survey, published in this month’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Schools across the country have seen the numbers of students eligible for the free-and-reduced-price lunch program swell this year. Race, parental education, and head of household’s marital status are factors that strongly influence a family’s finances and the need for food stamps, wrote authors Mark R. Rank and Thomas A. Hirschl.

The consequences are significant. These events, the authors say, can jeopardize a child’s health and life experiences.

“The current recession is likely to generate for children in the United States the greatest level of material deprivation that we will see in our professional lifetimes,” pediatrician Paul Wise wrote in an editorial in the journal.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor