How to Encourage Your Stressed Kids
Stressed kids feel like a burden and struggle with confidence, school performance, behavior, and more. Stress is a part of life for all of us, and unfortunately kids are feeling its effects earlier and earlier. Helping your kids learn to manage stress is a critical life skill in the world we live in, and here are some things to consider to help you encourage them!
Stress is On the Rise
According to a study published in the Journal of Caring Sciences, experts estimate that approximately 35 percent of American children experience stress-related health problems. These levels of stress also “play a major role in increasing physical, mental and social problems.”
Another study found estimates that for kids, “the prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms during COVID-19 have doubled, compared with prepandemic estimates.”
Our kids are feeling the effects of stress in all areas of their lives, from social situations to school behavior and academic performance. If your child is struggling with constantly feeling stressed out, anxious, or overwhelmed, here are some strategies you can use to help them manage their stress more effectively.
4 Ways to Help Your Kids Manage Stress
1. Talk through big picture perspectives and set priorities as a family.
If any of the stress your child is carrying is from a burden of unmet expectations from you as a parent or other authority figures, it’s important to talk through those things. Are those expectations realistic? Are they misinterpreting your desire for their success as being afraid to make a mistake?
These and other questions can help you sort through what is really causing your child’s stress to rise so much. When you and your child are on the same page about what’s important for your family unit, they’ll be able to release some of the pressure for the things that don’t matter as much in this season.
2. Encourage effort rather than results.
Many kids feel stressed and overwhelmed because so much praise comes from performance or results rather than effort. If a child receives high praise for an A but a lecture for a hard-won C in school, the pressure of performance may keep them from even trying in the future.
Rewarding and encouraging effort in your child is a great way to release some of the burden of success and allow them to just be human. It’s a human experience to try and fail. In fact, this is a critical skill as you become an adult! A majority of learning happens when something doesn’t go as planned, and being able to be resilient to bounce back and try again is one of the biggest life skills you can foster in your child.
Check out this post for some more tips on reframing conversations with your child.
3. Find ways to connect.
Look for fun, relaxing ways to connect with your kids without the pressure of intense conversations. This is an important place where your kids will likely give more insight into how they’re really feeling! Get out in nature, pick up some Lego sets or craft supplies, and spend some unstructured time just connecting and letting your child know they are safe and valued.
4. Look into causes of stress
Stress is a broad term that can come from a variety of factors. Do some detective work: what is actually making your child feel this way? Some common culprits for kids in America are:
Being too busy.
If you’re constantly running from school to sports practices to weekend recitals and have no breathing room in your schedule, your child will likely feel more stressed on a daily basis. Addressing this goes back to our first point: set priorities as a family. Which activities are non-negotiable, and which ones can be let go for a season while you reset?
Too much screen time.
Studies show again and again that screen time makes us more stressed. Whether it’s scrolling Instagram after school or playing video games late into the night, excess screen time may be altering your child’s brain in a way that sets it on edge.
Dietary concerns, including too much sugar.
One not-as-talked-about cause of your child’s stress could be his or her diet. Biologically, blood sugar spikes and dips throughout the day set off a cascade of neurological impacts that leave you feeling more anxious, overwhelmed, tired, and stressed. Taking some time to be intentional with food choices along with your child can set them up for success!
Low cognitive skills.
If your child’s brain simply does not have the capacity to keep up with day-to-day life in the classroom, or if he or she struggles to process and reason through problems that arise, stress will be a bigger factor. We hear from so many families whose kids have just given up. They feel like failures, they don’t want to give effort any more, and school just seems to be an insurmountable obstacle.
For these kids, supporting cognitive skills has been a life-changing way to turn around not only their ability to learn, read, and remember, but also to feel confident doing it!
Everything in life goes through a “filter” of cognitive skills. If these skills are weak, everyday tasks are going to be harder, and stress is going to feel more overwhelming.
Cognitive skill weaknesses contribute to your child’s stress load by:
- Making daily tasks harder than they need to be
- Having assignments, tests, and homework take longer than necessary, putting a time pressure on an already stressed-out brain
- Making it more difficult for your child to plan, problem-solve, and come up with solutions on their own
- Causing struggles in reading, math, and other subjects due to a lack of cognitive processing ability
We have a FREE BRAIN QUIZ that can help you get an initial idea of which cognitive skills may be keeping your child from experiencing easy learning and greater confidence! Click here to take it today >>
