Love E x
@DOESNOTDOIT
P.S. Thanks for reading. Proper blogging again later this week.
How to de-stress your teenager.
From exams to social media, young people have
stress coming at them from all angles. What can parents do to help?
It’s exam season again and it’s only February.
This time it is mocks for our middle son, who’s 17 (we have three boys, who are
13, 17 and 19). He’s “vibesing” them, rather than revising for them, which I
think means he’s going with the flow, not killing himself doing flat-out
revision. That’s fine by me.
From where I’m sitting, here at our family
kitchen table surrounded by GCSE and A-level study aids, teenagers in 2016 have
stress coming at them from all angles. First, there’s the pressure to do well
at school, to achieve outstanding GCSE, AS and A-level results, to bag multiple
offers from Russell group universities, while also being accomplished in
extracurricular activities such as sport and music, and trekking the Atlas
mountains for the DofE Gold (Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, for the uninitiated).
Then there’s peer pressure and social media pressure heaped on them as well.
I went to my middle son’s school sixth-form
awards evening recently. After the event, I quizzed my son and some of his
friends. “Life is stressful,” said one 17-year-old girl, who didn’t want to be
identified, but let’s call her Issy. “Literally all anyone cares about at
school is your results . . . I burnt out doing my GCSEs, and I’ve never really
got it back. I feel anxious all the time. I find it difficult to sleep. I never
really switch off. I went to the doctor about it and I told him I don’t even
know why.”
It’s not just the teens who are stressed, it is
their parents as well. A mum of three teenagers I was moaning to recently came
out with the exact same thing, calling her daughter “a Duracell Bunny”, who
never stops. “I can see it all simmering under the surface, all the time. I
wasn’t prepared for how relentless the work was going to be, from GCSEs right
through to A levels, constant pressure for four years.”
I don’t want to come over all “in my day” about
this, but in my day (the 1980s), being a teenager just wasn’t like this. We
muddled along, somewhere between swotty and New Romantic. I spent my youth down
the village pub, drinking rum and black, dashing off A-level essays in
registration on Mondays, seconds before “Sir” arrived.
Most of us did a bit of work, acquired a few
half-decent A levels, which was more than adequate to get into a half-decent
university, then went on to get a half-decent job. There was very little
pressure. No university fees in those days, which now turn the future into a
massive gamble. And no internet, social media or mobile phone either.
“Even when she’s studying, the phone is there
next to her and the texts and alerts are coming through,” the mum tells me. “Sometimes
I feel the phone is an extension of her hand. She’s always on social media,
there’s no let-up, even on holiday.”
Issy, too, admits to finding social media
stressful and a distraction, getting into arguments on Twitter late at night in
her bedroom when ideally she should be winding down, or finishing that essay.
“We get into arguments about politics,” she says. “The bombing of Syria vote
was a big night. And then there’s such a culture of degrading women on Twitter.
It’s quite subtle, but so prominent . . . slut-shaming. I don’t know why we
have the word slut. Showing flesh, sleeping around, I don’t know why people
care about that.”
So why don’t you leave Twitter, I ask. She looks
aghast. “Because then I wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
Of course, hand in hand with constant posting on
social media goes the risk of making a mistake. Unlike an ill-judged remark, or
a snog with the wrong boy at a disco, which is about as far as it went . . .
yes, “in my day”, a mistake on social media has the power to haunt publicly the
sorry, underaged perpetrator for years.
Could it be academic pressure, combined with peer
pressure, exacerbated by social media pressure, that’s causing so many teens to
buckle? The number of young people with depression doubled between the 1980s
and 2000s, according to the children and young people’s mental health charity
YoungMinds. And besides depression, or possibly as a result of it for some
teens, there’s risk-taking. Which parent of a teenager doesn’t have a scary
anecdote concerning sexting, parties out of control, legal highs, or binge
drinking? (I’m not allowed to mention my sons’ transgressions here, of course,
so let’s gloss over the traffic cone/sink full of sick in the bathroom
incident.)
“I recently took a blade off a girl in PE,” says
Issy. “She’d made it from a pencil sharpener. She had cut marks all up her
arms.”
About 25 per cent of young people self-harm on at
least one occasion, most commonly by cutting, according to statistics supplied
by YoungMinds. Boys are as vulnerable as girls, they explain, but tend not to
turn their emotions in on themselves in the same way. Getting into fights,
deliberately getting hurt, these can all be manifestations of self-harming.
So what can we, the loving and concerned parents
of teenage children, do to help to manage all this stress? I don’t pretend to
have answers, but I do have, at the time of writing, three pretty chilled-out
children. In part, I think this is because they’re boys and not much worried
about what other people think, not so eager to please, as girls appear to be.
But also, perhaps, it’s about what I, and their father, don’t do. We don’t nag
them about work. We don’t try and live our lives through them. Their successes
and failures are their own. Above all else, I think it’s important to talk,
talk, talk. Maybe this is the key. And talk comes cheap, we can all do that.
Sitting in the audience at that sixth-form awards
evening, waiting for my son’s turn to go up, I had to resist the urge to shout
out: “Just grab the stupid award and run! And keep on running, like Forrest
Gump, as far as your impossibly skinny pubescent legs can carry you, until you
flop down exhausted somewhere far from school and weep for all the innocent
pre-internet, pre-selfie, pre-A levels that take over your whole life, fun
you’ve never had! Then go off and find a nice little village pub and order a
rum and black.”
Except obviously I didn’t because I hope my son
knuckles down to his A levels when the time comes, gets good grades and goes on
to university, like his older brother did. And, more importantly, I hope he
manages to get through it all without cracking under the stress. Fingers
crossed.
Follow Elizabeth on Twitter @doesnotdoit and on her blog at idontknowhowshedoesntdoit.blogspot.co.uk
The expert guide for parents
Avoiding stress is all about building mental
resilience, according to the clinical psychologist Tanya Byron. “It’s a life
skill,” she says, explaining that high EQ (emotional intelligence) is a
stronger marker of success, both professional and personal, than high IQ. Here
are five ways to help teenagers to develop emotional intelligence and become
less stressed.
Remember that emotions are contagious
“Remaining calm yourself is vital,” says Janey Downshire, the
parenting expert and author of Teenagers Translated. “So be a safe haven
psychologically for your child.” Emotions are contagious and children will
mirror yours. Don’t let their stress get to you so that you end up in a mutual
spiral of anxiety.
Turn off screens an hour before bed
“Sleep is incredibly important,” says Byron. Teenagers nowadays are
often engaged 24 hours a day with work, screens and mobile phones. Looking at a
screen late at night interferes with melatonin and keeps the mind from
switching off. There’s a temptation to overwork and over-revise, especially for
perfectionist girls. However, a good night’s sleep is vital for laying down
memory, so encourage them to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. “No screen time
for at least an hour before sleep,” says Byron.
Get high on exercise
Sport and exercise are helpful because the dopamine released when we
play together — with the regular deep breathing that results — counteracts the
effects of stress and produces a “feel good” or high. Downshire explains that
exercise is not just about endorphins, but also a form of mindfulness. “Being
aware of yourself in that moment, putting breathing and the body into something
regular rather than working at a mental level.”
Byron recommends downloading a mindfulness app —
Headspace — on to your teen’s phone to help them to switch off, find balance
and learn how to regulate their emotions. “When we’re anxious our brain becomes
our bully,” she explains. “We don’t have to believe everything we think.”
Work in 45-minute bursts
When it comes to revising, Byron suggests tackling tricky subjects
early in the day and leaving easier ones until later, when energy is low, and encouraging
lots of breaks. “Forty-five-minute bursts of revision are long enough,” she
says. “And make sure there are periods when your child switches off
completely.” Downshire agrees, emphasising the importance of other activities,
such as going out with friends, having a long bath, reading, listening to or
playing music (music has the power to numb psychological pain, she says) or
just going for a brisk walk, are great ways to relax if undertaken without a
mobile phone to hand.
Beware perfectionism
Byron and Downshire warn about the drive for perfectionism, which can
lead to a defeatist mindset. Phrases such as “I’m bad at . . .”, “I can’t do
that . . .” and “I always fail at . . .” should ring alarm bells. To combat
this, help your child to set their own realistic and achievable academic goals,
rather than having them set by others (eg, school or peer pressure). Then be
sure to praise your child when these goals are achieved or exceeded, which more
often than not they will be.
E x
E x
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