Take a look at this revealing infographic based on a survey of almost 1000, 9-13 year-olds about both what stresses them out and what they do to de-stress. I’ll have a few comments below.
To highlight a few points, I thought it was striking that only 22% of kids talk to their parents about their stress but 75% would like to be able to rely on their parents more to help them cope. In my experience, we parents are too tempted to think “the kids are alright.” We too readily accept answers like, “I’m ok.” “It’s fine” and “I don’t know” from our kids. We don’t expect them to learn how to express themselves so we don’t take the time to teach them to express themselves and work through their stress. Kids are capable of articulating their feelings and working with you to develop good problem solving skills, but they need to be coached to do it.
If you would like to learn more effective strategies for helping your kids cope with the stressors in their lives, check out Parenting with Grace: The Catholic Parents’ Guide to Raising (almost) Perfect Kids and God Help Me, This STRESS is Driving Me Crazy: Finding Balance Through God’s Grace, or contact the Pastoral Solutions Institute (at www.CatholicCounselors.com or 740-266-6461) to learn more about our tele-counseling practice.