CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Teen stress Developing resilience Teach your child how to overcome disappointment

Portsmouth Herald - 4/16/2017

Just as a toddler learns how to react after a fall by the look on his parent’s face, teenagers learn how to navigate the world socially and emotionally by watching their parents’ day-to-day reactions to the ups and downs of life.

If parents model flexibility in thinking, ability to tolerate uncertainty and acceptance of another person’s perspective, children are more apt to model these skills and be better able to recognize something isn’t working and adjust their behavior to improve their lives, said Lynn Lyons, a Concord-based clinical social worker and author of “Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children.”

“It all goes back to the scenario: when your toddler falls down they will decide based on their parent’s face whether they are OK or not, and that does not stop past toddlerhood,” Lyons said.

One of the signs of an emotionally-equipped teenager, Lyons said, is the ability to handle the unexpected. When life does not go the way they want it to teens need to be equipped to handle disappointment.

“If the message is: ‘You have to do A to get to B,’ then we narrow their options and the more narrow the options they perceive, the more stressed out they are going to be,” said Lyons, who is an internationally recognized expert in the field of anxiety. “The more experience we give kids in not getting their own way, not getting what they want, not achieving something, the better, because the more experience teens have in these areas helps them decide if they really want something how do they go about getting it ... This generation of parents is not big on this lesson of how to tolerate the uncertainty and the disappointment of life.”

Student Assistance Counselor Gina Brodsky said a lot of factors determine a teen’s mental health and she does not believe there is always a direct correlation between a parents’ coping mechanism and their child’s. She has, however, received phone calls from parents seeking to make a problem go away for their teen.

“I see it all the time and I always remind parents that some of the best defining moments in a teen’s life can come through adversity. We need to allow obstacles to become opportunities. It’s not our job as parents to remove the obstacle or to get them out of trouble, but it is our job as parents to guide them through the trouble,” said Brodsky, who has worked at York High School’s student services department for the past 14 years.

Empowering teens to grow through hardship is indeed a vital part of parenting, agreed York High School social worker Kathy Damiano, who was hired last summer after a needs assessment by former principal Megan Ward revealed that a social worker in the high school could break down barriers to treatment for teens.

To see a child suffer, can trigger a parents’ desire to fix a problem, but Damiano advises parents to step back, allow natural consequences to play out so teens can develop self-advocacy skills, which will in the end boost confidence and lessen anxiety.

With stress-filled lives practically a badge of honor for some, those who take advantage of healthy outlets for this frenetic energy can model ways to maintain balance in this competitive, over-scheduled world. Even as children grow into teens, parents should demand their children not fall prey to the allure of overscheduling by choosing one sports team or extracurricular activity a season, rather than two.

“I see kids who are very over scheduled and the parents say this is not us, they are signing up for these things. This is another skill you have to teach your kids, when enough is enough. We must show kids how to step back and see what works for your family versus what works for everybody else, which, yes, does take a little parenting courage,” Lyons said.

If a teen does not heed repeated requests to simplify his or her schedule to stem the tide of stressors, many parents find themselves nagging too much. Change can come by scheduling a family meeting to provide the opportunity to air feelings in a supportive environment, Brodsky said.

“If each person explains what is going well for them and what needs improvement and their perception of what’s going well around the house and what needs improvement, every member of the family is given a platform for their voice to be heard. This time spent listening can reduce so much stress in a family,” Brodsky said.

The roller-coaster-ride of the teenage years may seem overly dramatic to the adults nearby, but to the teen in stress, the problems are very real. The best thing parents can do is really listen to their teen to find underlying messages that are often hidden. Brodsky suggested parents not minimize the happy, sad or confused moments in a teen’s life. Clichés such as “Life isn’t fair, suck it up or you are too young to know what love is all about,” are conversation killers that shut down teens from sharing their heart’s meanderings.

“Sometimes parents want to fix things and talk too much when they need to step back and listen to what the kids are saying. It’s important not to just placate them with comments that ‘everything will work out, no need to worry’,” Damiano said. “Certainly we don’t want to amplify issues by making it bigger, but they also don’t want to diminish what they are trying to say because it is real. Their anxiety, stress and worries are all real.”

There has been an increase in parents and teens in her practice complaining of stress, worry and anxiety, which is the physical manifestation of stress, Lyons said. There also has been a rise in the past decade of teens with diagnosis of depression and anxiety taking prescription drugs.

“Stress is the perception or reality, depending on the situation, that you can’t handle what is in front of you, that you are somehow either in danger or overwhelmed, that there is too much there, so the demands exceed your perceived abilities,” said Lyons, who teaches those who work with children how to support kids to interrupt the cycle of worry.

Lyons recommends parents pay attention to their children’s ability to cope with the unknown and to seek advice if their children are habitual worriers because one of the top predictors of developing depression as a teen or adult is an untreated anxiety disorder in a child, she said.

Children who are anxious and avoid participating in daily activities, such as field-trips, sleepovers or birthday parties, are at a much greater risk to feel lonely and develop depression because these activities provide opportunities to build social skills necessary to build community as a teen or adult, said Lyons, who also wrote: “Playing with Anxiety: Casey’s Guide for Teens and Kids.”

“It’s a very strong possibility, not at all unusual, for worried kids to become depressed teens because these are kids that anxiety gets in the way of developing social skills one needs to have to feel connected, when you are lonely and isolated as a teen or adult you are at far greater risk for depression.”