Three Tips For Helping Teens Get Through Stress

Teens have many pressures to cope with, Work, School, Social Life’s, Social Media, Family and many more.

You as a parent may have noticed their high stress through withdrawal or even that charming hormonal attitude.

I have put together 3 simple tips that might help you all get through these tough times. It’s already term 3 and term 4 with final exams only around the corner, getting into some great habits will help you prepare for them.

3 tips for helping teens with stress:

Listen!

Listen to your teen. Ask how they are feeling? What do they have on? How many exams, SACS or what their work schedule is?

But here is the hard part, don’t give them advice and don’t discount how they are feeling. Let them work out what they need to do and wait for them to ask you for the advice, even then they still may not like it. (Mainly because they know it is right, but they don’t want to admit to that.)

Listen with Empathy, take yourself back to when you were a Teen and what you were like, give them a little break for everything that is going on through their head that they may not be telling you just yet.

Quality, Study Break time!

Encourage your Teen to have a break from study, not by just going in and telling them to stop studying, but go in with a cuppa, a fresh green smoothy, take a little trip to the shops to grab a healthy treat, go for a walk, run together or play a board game, do something you know your teen will enjoy that doesn’t evolve screen time.

Break up their day of constantly having their heads in their books or sitting on a computer. Give their brain a break for some FUN!

I understand that you may not always be home yourself, due to work commitments, my Mum worked nights so I was home alone most of the time after school.

Put together a snack or smoothy and have it in the fridge or on the bench ready for them. Send a little text to remind them to take a break. (You can even schedule it to send so you don’t forget when you are in a meeting.) Why not even put a little motivational quote in there as well. Just something to check in on them so they know you do care about how they are going.

Sleep! – A little bit of tough love may be involved

The most important thing for anyone to manage stress is getting a good nights rest.

Help your Teen to achieve this…. as I said there could be some tough love here.

Remove devices from their rooms at night, so there is no staying up late talking to friends or scrolling through newsfeeds, remove their school books and study materials so they can really separate and let go of the work that may still need to be completed.

If your teen struggles to sleep at night try a Yoga Nidra or Meditations. I still listen to a Yoga Nidra most nights and it puts me to sleep in no time – (Irest at Ease by Richard Miller). You can find many of them on Youtube or Itunes. Set up a Bluetooth speaker in their room and have it playing when they go to bed. Find some soft music that may help them relax.

Make sure they are drinking enough water and eating healthy as this also helps with getting a good nights rest.

These are just a couple of things that can help, the main part is to show interested and show that you care about how they are going and what they are up to and you are there to help when they need it.

Through Yoga we can teach teens how to manage their stress levels, relax and be completely focused on what they are doing at that moment.

Mention this blog and get a free trial class for Teen Yoga at Island Healing.