Stress Management Part 1
12th March 2006
How do you cope with your child’s stress? How do you help them to relieve their stress? As far as I know, stress management is still a very important skill that they need to learn, and to develop for their life. So far, I’ve seen most of the following mechanisms for coping with stress in schools:
- playing the fool
- distracting their friends
- poking fun at other students who are studying
- playing computer games
- being alone
- snapping at others and being bad tempered
- blaming others
- crying
Most of these methods are not useful, because they don’t result in productive activity most of the time. Yet, some useful stress coping activites are usually not encouraged by parents including:
- making and meeting close friends;
- exercising, especially for kids who enjoy sports;
- playing loud music as a release;
- drawing, especially artistic work that takes a lot of time to do;
- blogging (writing an online journal).
A number of other methods are used by teenagers and kids nowadays, which I won’t really have time to write in one single post. The fact is, many parents are clueless at the level of stress that teenagers experience in their life. There are a lot of confusing things including the search for an identity, meaning and purpose of living, friendship and their disappointments, intimate relationships which they are just starting to discover, and many many more. Moreover, the teenagers tend to experience bouts of change physiologically due to puberty, and many things that they experience may not have been explained to them such that they can manage themselves well.
Stress management is a skill; yet, we need to make sure that we do not contribute to the stress levels unnecessarily. Relaxation methods can work and do help. Sometimes, stress management training can develop better coping skills that lead to better management of states. Ultimately, a student must cope effectively with stress - or risk being lost in a world spiraling with negative emotions. After all, when we focus on the negative, we tend to find it difficult to get out of it sometimes.
The first aspect of stress management for your children is to learn how to develop a positive nurturing environment for your children, free of threats or doulble messages in your communication. Threats such as “if you don’t do this I will…” or double messages like “why can’t you be like your brother” tend to lower self-esteem. Instead, building a nurturning relationship basically calls for a better way to encourage them without coming across as “you’re doing this only because of your own selfish reasons”. Of course, not all teenagers have this kind of belief system. However, it is imperative for parents to develop nurturning communication. Here are some suggestions:-
- Look for things that are deserving of mention - especially in areas where they feel a sense of competence in - and praise them.
- Never reward using external motivation devices like a new bike or computer. Extrinsic motivation has been shown to be very short term and seldom gets the results we want. We can buy things for our children, but not because they performed well.
- Have informal conversations with your child. By talking to them about interesting things you discovered or learnt, you might engage them to share things they are interested about as well.
- Converse with your child as you might another professional colleague. Sometimes, we underestimate their capabilities and do not give them a chance to grow very unwittingly! Ask them for suggestions! You’ll be surprised what you might find.
- Engage them not just for work related things. Your first question should not be about school or homework. Ask them about that new game they were playing, the issue they had with their friends, etc. Listen to their emotions, and give them an outlet to let it go.
More to come…