Teenagers are among the demographic which suffers from some of the highest amounts of stress, yet, they often wrongly judge it as inconsequential and try to ignore it, to the detriment of their health. And unlike a placebo effect, stress effects teenagers, whether they come to know of it or not. In such cases, parents often have to hold an intervention and talk to their children, in an effort to alleviate their stress and get them out of whatever bog is holding them down.
To that end, here is a list of a few strategies which can aid parents in helping their children relieve stress:
Make Sure They Get Sleep
Between classwork, homework, extra-curricular activities, projects and managing a social life, sleep can be hard to come by for teenagers. This is doubly true when school is in session, and often children try to skip out on a few hours of sleep – or in extreme cases, go without sleep – in order to make sure they can manage everything else. Warning: This is a bad idea!
Sleep is extremely important for the body, and skiving on a proper night’s rest will not only reduce your attention span on the coming day, it will also take a toll on you physically, and you will not be able to put your best foot forward in any activity. Make sure your children get enough sleep, coax them if you have to!
Introduce Them to Physical Activities
The best way to reduce stress is through the avenue of sports or some other similar physical activity. All forms of frustration, anger, depression, annoyance and other negative emotions can be burned away with through intense exercises, sports such as football, working out, and the like.
Hiking is another good option for the same, wherein you get refreshed as you move through the world’s natural beauty and realize that there are far greater things at work in the cosmos than our minor frustrations and disappointments.
Burn the negativity away!
Talk to Them
Stress plays on the mind, and children end up imagining worst case scenarios, the kind of situations which may never happen, but which are conjured by a despondent mind when the chips are down. At such times, it helps to have someone to talk to, a listening ear, one willing to commiserate and tell the child that all is not lost, that the dark cloud has a silver lining, and that this too shall pass.
Sometimes, a simple gesture can be enough, a kind word can be the difference between a stressed out person giving up, and one continuing to get up and fight against all the odds. So be there for your children. Listen to them. Talk to them. If they are unwilling to open up to you, then make sure they are at least ready to talk to someone their own age, preferably one of their close friends. Do not let them close you out.
These are a few tips which should be helpful for your children to relieve stress.
