Notes from "Helping Parents and Kids Avoid the Stress Mess"
A Presentation by Neil Bernstein, Ph.D. at the Parents Council of Washington meeting (Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005)

All of us and our children live with stress, but how does one deal with it? With the Internet, kids have greater access to information than we did, not having to go to the library to do their research. They feel pressure to keep up and are exhausted. The average teenager needs 9 - 9 ½ hours sleep in order to function properly, yet the national average is 6 - 6 ½ hours. As parents, we need to learn to manage this for them and for ourselves. The college race is another source of pressure.

Given these pressures, what's "normal" in our kids?

• Wanting to succeed
• Wanting to please one's parents
• Self-consciousness about their appearance
• Senior girls live in fear of the "freshmen 15" (pounds gained in college)
• Concerns about being accepted by peers
• Locking themselves in their rooms for hours
• Worries about deadlines and exams
• Looking for shortcuts in homework - seeking efficiency
• Younger children are more focused on school
• Older children are more focused on social lives and sexual identities

What's not "normal"? Signs of excessive stress to watch for:

• Problems sleeping - falling or staying asleep
• Physical symptoms - stomachaches, headaches
• Being irritable, sarcastic, impatient to the extreme; too easily upset
• Feeling burnt out all the time
• Withdrawal from family or friends
• Truly obsessed with something (popularity, perfectionism, thoughts control their life)
• Too much time online (the average teen time on the computer is 3 - 4 hours per day; the average i.m. time is 1 - 1 ½ hours per day)
• Any emerging pattern of risk-taking behavior (drinking, marijuana, speeding tickets)

How do kids relax these days?

• I.m.'ing
• Downloading music onto their Ipods
• TV - 3-4 hours per night is the average across all age children
• Hobbies
• Sports, exercise
• Computer games, esp. with boys. 5-10% of the computer population are devoting an excessive amount of time (5-6 hours is a sign of addictive computer behavior)

It is important for a kid to be able to do something that is completely removed from a stressful situation. Sometimes "wasted time" is important. At the same time, it helps to teach kids self-discipline. The majority of kids aren't sufficiently disciplined: they multi-task, doing homework and i.m. at the same time. It can also help to learn relaxation techniques such as deep breathing.

Stressed kids are twice as likely to drink or smoke. 50% of 11th and 12th graders are drinking; 30% are smoking marijuana.

So how can we help?

• Find ways to model how to handle stress
• Make our expectations reasonable and be aware of the price on our child of success
• Embrace the concept of "good enough". Don't put kids in the position of feeling that parents are never satisfied
• Does the shoe fit? Ask yourself, What my child is doing, is that compatible with their ability to do it?"
• Make sure that kids know how to be self-disciplined. When kids ask for your help, do help but don't micro-manage.

To help manage stress, engage in good communication and limit setting. Kids must feel that it is emotionally safe to tell their parent what is going on in their life.

• Enter their world: Go in through the child's world and the child exits through the adult's world. Listen to the music they like. Get to know the person that they are.
• Match their moods: If your chilld is upset and the reason seems silly to you, take it seriously because your child does.
• Try to start all conversations with a positive note. Don't start a communication with criticism.
• Make sure you have their attention when you talk to them.
• Ask questions they can answer. Don't ask, "How come your grades have dropped?" Ask, "What's the matter with that math teacher", to get a conversation going about the math.
• Share stories about yourself. It's important that our kids know we made mistakes, that we were vulnerable too. Don't go overboard with this --keep it relevant.
• Don't be afraid to set limits. We do have the right to make rules. We monitor and we regulate. Know how responsible your child is. The more responsible, the less you need to manage their lives. The message is, "I'd like you to run your own life so I don't have to."
• If you choose to punish your kid, make sure the punishment fits the crime.