6 Tips To Teach Your Child To Manage Stress
Adolescence can be a very stressful time. This problem is compounded by the fact that many teens don’t find healthy ways to handle stress.
The high levels of stress to which adolescents are subjected expose them to a wide variety of risk situations, both for their physical and mental health, which can lead to physical health, mental health, educational problems and social problems.
Strategies to Help Teens Manage Stress
For many parents it is a challenge to teach their children to manage stress because they do not know how to do it themselves. Those who are in this situation should take this as a challenge of personal improvement to face together.
Identify sources of stress
Adolescents can experience stress due to a multitude of situations, which can be academic, derived from problems with friends or classmates, from the first romantic relationships, or even tension generated by the practice of a competitive sport.
Whatever type of stress a teenager experiences, their concerns should be taken seriously, even if as adults it may seem silly. The main thing is to start by helping the adolescent to identify the source or sources of stress. Sometimes it is enough to ease the tension to identify what the reason is. In any case, it is the basis for effective action.
Come up with the solution to the problem together
Most of the stress problems of adolescents are due to the difficulty of solving the problems. Many of them, instead of facing the problems, let them pass. In fact, small problems become big complications due to not having faced their solution in time.
Teach to think realistically
Adolescents often think that things are worse than they are with respect to themselves and their influence, magnifying the real problem and its consequences. That is why it is necessary to help children to see problems more realistically and explain to them that emotions often cloud our minds.
It is important not to judge your emotions and to encourage you to have a healthy self-talk. That internal dialogue is largely conditioned by the messages you hear from your parents. If a teenager receives messages of compassion and kindness, he will be kinder to himself and more self-compassionate.
It is also necessary to show or help adolescents discover how to deal with uncomfortable feelings and unpleasant situations, although this does not mean that we have to protect them from these feelings and situations.
Being a good stress management model
You can’t say one thing and do another, at least when it comes to education. Children reproduce their parents’ pattern of behavior, even in the way they manage stress. Therefore, parents must lead by example. The good news is that it is never too late to learn to manage stress.
Promote a healthy lifestyle
Health and stress are closely related. A healthy lifestyle, in which there is no lack of a balanced diet, physical exercise and sufficient sleep is essential to limit stressful elements and to balance the stresses of the day to day. Once again, the example of parents is indispensable.
