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| Helping Teens Handle Stress | In accordance with Reuters Health reports, more than one third of US teenagers say that they feel stressed – out on their daily basis. And such stress is considered to be felt because of the overwhelming expectations by parents and society. Moreover, another study has found out that about two thirds of teenagers are stressed at least one time every week.
As for parents, how can they get to know their teenage child is / children are stressed? For them there are 13 signs of a stressed child provided below:
1. Chronic fatigue – a child feels exhausted, tired, this child has a sense of being physically run down;
2. A child is experiencing anger at people, who make any kind of demands;
3. There is a self – criticism for putting up with the demands;
4. A teen is irritable, cynical and “negative”;
5. A teen is experiencing a sense of being besieged;
6. A teen is exploding easily at things, which seem to be completely inconsequential;
7. A teen suffers from frequent headaches and from gastrointestinal distubances;
8. There usually occurs either weight loss or gain;
9. A teen suffers from sleeplessness and / or depression;
10. There is shortness of breath;
11. A teen becomes suspicious;
12. There is feeling of helplessness experienced;
13. A teen experiences somewhat increased degree of risk taking
It is extremely important to provide time management for every teenagers, therefore, there exist lots of all kinds of things, such as school, work, any extracurricular activity, homework, church, time with friends, band, drama, sport, etc. which are vying for their time. And it is extremely difficult to handle all of this without having to deal with all the stress that these things bring to the teens’ lives. And here are the following advices for parents to do:
1. It is important to realize that stress is real. It can not be simply swept under some rug and there is no hope that it will go away on its own, because it will not. Stress can become huge in the life of every teenager. Parents should realize that stress is real. But unlike parents, who should know better, teenagers sometimes have difficulty to acknowledge that stress can develop into a real problem for them, and, moreover, there are cases, when they do not even consider stress as a problem.
2. There exists hope in the middle of stress. Realizing that stress really exists does not become the end of the world at all. It is necessary to acknowledge that there is a source within everyone to overcome anything, coming the way.
3. Stress is vital and unavoidable part of everyone life. Although, there is some stress, which is not only helpful, but which can even be healthy (it should also be pointed out, however, that there is some stress, which is unhealthy). Stress should be considered as something, which provides exercises for the body. This consideration causes the body to grow and become stronger. This is true for adult people, as well as for teenagers.
Helping teenagers to come to terms with three abovementioned principles would start them on their journey of coping with practically all the stressors of their lives in a healthy way.
And here are some tips for parents do to in order to help their teenagers handle stress:
1. Parents should try to identify the stressors in order to recognize the signs of stress, mentioned above;
2. Spending some time together with the teen and / or having just a few good laughs together would go a long way in stress reducing procedure, as well as in building trustful and solid family relationships;
3. Parents should provide their teenagers with the opportunities to learn stress management techniques;
4. Parents should have reasonable reachable expectations and set manageable goals for their teens in academic, as well as in extra curricular fields of activities;
5. It is important for parents to encourage their teens and even smaller children to do Physical exercise and sports;
6. Parents should encourage their children and help them in establishing good relationships with extended family members, as well as with friends and neighbors, because they should know that simply knowing that there is something else to turn to share their feelings can be relieving for teenagers’
7. Every parent is to be extremely sensitive to the least changes in the teenager’s behavior;
8. When at least one of the parents becomes stressed, it is extremely unadvisable to pass it to the teenagers.
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