Teens Coping With Stress Often Make Bad Decisions

Everywhere you look, teenagers are making bad decisions. Whether it’s with drugs and alcohol, or taking to crime, or dropping out of school, or anything else that’s counterproductive to the normal teenage years; something must be going wrong with our youth, right? Well not so fast. Teenagers have always had stress and anxiety. This is a time when their bodies are changing, they’re going through puberty, they’re dealing with identity crises, they’re having to worry about sex and peer pressure, making good grades in school, fitting in, and all the other things that may seem like the whole world to them. It’s just that in the past, teens coping with stress used to take to sports or other activities that allowed them an outlet to deal with that stress. These days, kids are eating poor diets, they’re spending most of their time in front of the TV or video games, the schools are failing to stimulate them and many parents aren’t home as they’re out working and trying to support the families. What you’re left with is teens coping with stress who have no supervision and no outlets for their stress so they try to drown their sorrows in drugs and alcohol, they take to crime because they give into negative peer pressure and, generally, they just don’t care anymore to try and do good.

A Support System

Teens coping with stress need a support system. They need someone to turn to when they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. If they’re getting picked on by a bully at school, they need to be able to voice that to someone so that it doesn’t seem as though the world is over. When that support system isn’t in place, teens coping with stress can oftentimes feel as though they need to take things into their own hands. That’s why you have school kids shooting bullies who abuse them instead of going to the authorities who may be able to stop such behavior. It’s our jobs as teachers, parents and adults to make sure we offer a support system to all teens coping with stress so that they know they have someone to turn to when things seem as though they’re all going horribly wrong.

Relating To Them

Think back to when you were a teenager. You felt as though your problems were unique. Nobody is going through this horrible thing you’re going through. Well, you couldn’t have been further from the truth. Many teens coping with stress are going through the same things we all went through as teens. We liked that girl who rejected our advances, we all got pimples, we all got teased for something and we all felt as though we didn’t fit in with this crowd or we all felt as though we were failing that course or we all felt as though our lives were over. Talk to your teenager and let them know you went through the same thing. Give them examples. By relating to teens, we can help them overcome their problems and not feel so stressed out. When they see you and how you turned out, despite going through the same things, they’ll be able to handle stress much better and they’ll be able to learn and take pleasure from their teenage years because it only comes along once.