STRESS IN CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS

 

Sometimes, children and teenagers display behavioral changes that adults do not understand. Those changes cause difficulties in the school setting and at home adding more stress to their parent’s lives. Very often, adults think that those behavioral changes are due to the age or to the child or teen’s personality, but actually, often times those behaviors are caused by stress.

Like adults, children and teenagers can feel stressed out for different reasons: the pressure of keeping good grades, participation in many extra-curricular activities after school, worry to not disappoint their parents or teachers, worry of losing their friends or not being accepted in the group of peers, changes in their physical body due to puberty or exams, are some examples. Additionally, children and teens can perceive their parent’s stress and concerns which causes more stress in them.

However, children and teenagers express their stress in a different way than adults do, mostly because they do not know that they have stress or what stress is. Consequently, parents and teachers usually do not realize that their children or students have stress and therefore, they do not address it in the right way.

Knowing how to identify these symptoms of stress in our children or students, is the most important step to provide the right support to them.

In this link you can find an interesting article to learn how to identify stress in your child or student.

https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/children?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=apa-stress&utm_content=signs-stress-kids-teens#