7 Practical Ways to Help Your Kids to Handle Stress.

We should help Kids to Handle Stress.

Stress, Anxiety, Tension, worries etc. are no longer the words related to only the adults but also with the kids – actually our kids are struggling with the Stress and they should learn to handle stress in their daily life. Due to academic pressure, parental pressure to excel in all field and also with the societal pressure, our kids are experiencing anxiety, stress and tension in their everyday life and becomes the victim of mental health issues. According to WHO, worldwide 10 percent of children and adolescents experience mental health issues but majority of them are not diagnosed or treated as the mental health of children is beyond the thinking of adults. So, it is very important to help our kids to handle the stressful situation in their lives.

1. Listen to Kids Always.

It is very important to listen to our kids very carefully, listen to their daily experiences in school, their little little emotions, their joy, their sorrows and also about their complains. Only through our reflective listening, we will be able to know about the experiences, the problems that our kids are passing by. Sometimes, a little issue can be a complex problem in later time. For example, a child reading in Std I was scolded by his teacher oneday for doing some misbehavior and he was afraid that his parents would be called for that event. He was so much afraid that he did not want to go to school and started to show tantrums if he was forced to go to school. Later, both teachers and parents talked with the child, listened to him and his problem was solved. So it is very important to listen to kids to help them to handle their stress.

2. Don’t Force them to Fulfill your Dreams but Tell them to Express their Dreams.

Our children are our life, our dream, the most precious gift from God. Actually, we start to live for our kids, do everything for our kids but we may often put too much pressure on our kids knowingly or unknowingly. Often, we force our kids to fulfill our wishes, our dreams, our unfulfilled desires and put so much pressure on them. In that situation, the child feels stressed. According to a study in 2020, it is observed that kids feel acutely stressed when their parents force them to fulfill their dreams. For example, you want to teach painting to your children as you are fond of painting from the childhood, but you did not get the scope to learn the techniques of painting from the experts. Now you want that your child will fulfill your dreams but your kid doesn’t like to paint but fond of dancing. Here if you force your kid to learn painting, you will exert stress on her. So, you can help her by discussing the matter and ask her to work as per her liking.

3. Teach them to Accept Failures also.

From the beginning of the childhood, we should teach our kids to accept failures along with the successes and failure is common phenomenon as the success. If they learn to accept failures in their life may be in sports, academic or others, they will surely feel less stressed, less anxious in life. Acceptance of failures as normal will surely help them to handle stressful situation in life. We can say to our kids that in the language of Bram Stocker, We Learn from Failure, not from Success. Examinations, Tests, Competitions will never put so much pressure on them if they learn to accept failures and thus can handle the stressful situation effectively.

4.Engage in Physical Exercise or Outdoor Play.

Physical exercise like running, jumping, cycling etc. or outdoor play always help everyone to reduce stress, anxiety or tension including the kids. Kids are fond of playing, they like to play always- they like to run or jump or hop or to play any game like badminton, football or even hide and seek. In stressful situation, the kids may involve in any kind of physical exercise or doing play and can divert their mind from the stressors. Not only that, during Physical exercise or Playing games different feel -good chemicals i.e., Neurotransmitters called Endorphins are produced in our brain which helps us to be relaxed and handle our stress. So, we can advise our kids to involve themselves in any kind of outdoor play or exercise if they feel anxiety or stress.

Outdoor play always help the kids to handle Stress.

5. Teach some Relaxation Techniques to your kids.

We should each our kids some relaxation techniques to handle stress in life like Breathing Techniques, Muscle Relaxation Technique, Backward Counting Techniques etc. In breathing techniques, they can take deep breathe slowly and breathe out in stressful situation. They can also count in backward way from 100 to 1 in stressful situation. Just taking a glass of cool water also help them to manage stress, to taking their mind out of the stressful situation for a while. They can also sing their favorite song or can listen to soothing music to handle stress. Simple Yoga asanas also help them to beat their stress.

6.Teach them to make a balance between Study Hours and other Activities.

The kids should be taught to make a balance between study hours and other activities, they can make a proper timetable or daily routine for their everyday work. In the timetable, there should be almost equal provision for study, playing games both indoor and outdoor, doing other creative activities like drawing, painting, singing, making crafts etc. These types of balance always help the kids to enjoy their activities, keep them away from boredom and stress. But there should be provision of flexibility in the timetable so that the kids can enjoy their activities and feel too much stress and tension.

7.Practice a Regular “Story-Telling” session with your Kids.

It is the most comfortable, most touched and also most scientific method of making the kids to destressed themselves, teaching the kids the innovative ways of handling the stress of daily life and also know in detail about the issues, difficulties, problems through which our kids are going on. The parents can regularly start story telling session with their kids where both will tell a story from their imagination, if the kids are in tension or stress regarding any issue- this will be reflected in their story. Then the parents can understand that their children are in stress and they can provide necessary help to them to handle the stress.

Story-Telling Session can help kids to handle Stress.

Not only that we can take our kids to a short walk, we can enjoy together their favorite ice-cream or chocolates, we can play together hide and seek or simply pillow fight to help our kids distract themselves from the stressors and thus handle stress in their lives.