According to the results of your quiz, the teen in your life is under a minor amount of stress. This is great news! This means that your teen is not yet experiencing the full physical and emotional toll that stress can take. This might be due to their natural resilience or it might be that they have excellent tools to handle the stress in their life.
Despite your teens low level of stress impact, that doesn’t mean they are stress-free. Some of the common stress-related symptoms include:
- 36% report feeling nervous or anxious
- 32% of teens say stress makes them feel as though they could cry
- 31% of teens report feeling overwhelmed as a result of stress
- 30% of teens feel depressed or sad as a result of stress
- 62% of college students experience overwhelming anxiety
- 40% of teens report feeling irritable or angry
- 36% of teens report fatigue/feeling tired
- 35% of teens have lain awake at night because of stress
- 32% of teens say they experience headaches
- 26% of teens report changes in sleeping habits
- 21% of teens experience an upset stomach or indigestion as a result of stress
- 23% of teens have skipped a meal because of stress
The reality is, our teens are living with plenty of stressors! Social media, academics, activities, sports, relationships, family, jobs and many other things in their lives are stressful.
Because your teen has a low stress-impact, now is the ideal time to help them acquire the skills and tools that can help them stay this way. While we can’t get rid of the stress in their life, we can help them adjust the way they react to their stress.
What we CAN do is help change the way our teens react to stress.
Helping teens and even younger children understand what stress is and how it can affect our health can help them start to mitigate the effects of stress, anxiety, and worry.
A few helpful tools parents can use to help teens manage stress include:
- Encourage them to take breaks throughout the day and decompress.
- Exercise is one of the best forms of stress relief. Teens who exercise regularly are less impacted by their stress.
- Teens who don’t get enough sleep are at a higher risk of stress. By supporting sleep you can positively impact their daily life.
- Help them use technology to their advantage by using websites, apps and other digital platforms to learn stress management techniques