Five Essential Skills for Minimizing School Stress

A couple of days ago I dropped my first-born off at college, 7 hours away from home. As we were getting his dorm room set up, you could tell he was processing some fear and stress he was feeling. He was asking a lot of questions, trying to make sure he knew what was necessary to survive on his own. One particular question struck me. He said, "I know what my schedule is, and when I am supposed to go to class. I know when I am going to study, but how do I know what to study?"

School stress affects all ages of children. Although some may be excited to start a new school year, there is inevitable stress a child faces in school. Some children are challenged by making new friends or relationship issues, while others feel stress over school work. There is stress in school sports, bullies, peer pressure, and fear about embarking on new journeys or learning new skills. Sometimes our children will talk to us about their stress; other times it manifests itself with misbehavior.

No mom wants their child to feel stress, and there are things we can do to help our children minimize stress in their lives. If you can help your children develop these five essential skills, they will be equipped for a lifetime. Much of adult stress can be alleviated with these five skills as well.

Social Skills
Relationships are one of the hardest things to navigate through. Even as adults, relationships produce some of our greatest challenges. Every human being has a different personality, different needs and desires, and their own set of unique values. This can make getting along with one another a little difficult at times. Social skills need to be modeled and taught; sometimes they need to be practiced through role playing. Of the many social skills children need, social manners, sharing/taking turns, conflict resolution, making new friends, anger management, and taking personal responsibility are the most important ones. Take an inventory of what skills would be most helpful for your child to work on, and concentrate on one or two of those this year.

Flexible Thinking
When asking your child to do his homework, have you ever heard this kind of response? "It's going to take forever!" or "It's too hard!". You can probably hear the whining already in those responses. It can be important to understand where our behavior or responses come from. First, our brain has a thought. As a result of that thought, we experience an emotion. From that emotion, we take some particular action, even if that action is doing nothing. Most of our stress is created by our thoughts and our particular perception of an external event. It's no different for a child. "My teacher is so mean." "I hate Spanish!" "Kayla is always mad at me." Notice the extreme language in these comments?

Teaching our children flexible thinking requires us to move our children from the extreme or the worst to a more adaptive style of thinking. For instance, my son just said to me "That's why I hate it when the power goes out (in response to the computer shutting down)." I said to him, "Stop. Listen to what you just said. A better response would be 'It's frustrating when the power goes out because the computer shuts down. But it's okay because I can just do something else while I am waiting for the computer to restart." Experiencing the benefits of flexible thinking begins with changing our thoughts.

Organization
Has your child ever raced around in the morning looking for something she needs for school? Has he ever missed the bus or failed to turn in a homework assignment? This type of school stress is caused by a lack of organization. It happens to everyone from time to time. As our children get older, the need for organization increases. It's never too early or too late to learn organization skills. Talk to your children about the importance of organization and help them see the benefits. Develop strategies for being better organized in the areas your child struggles. Look for ways to eliminate the obstacles that stand in the way to greater organization. And most importantly, model organizational skills for your children because children see our actions more than they hear our words.

Courage and Faith
Fear causes a lot of stress for children. They can be afraid of meeting new people or trying something new. They fear losing a best friend, or that their teacher is mad at them. Children have a lot of the same fears as adults do - fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear from disturbing news events, and health related fears. The most important skills for minimizing fear are courage and faith. Courage is developed through practice and taking baby steps. As we move forward and face fears by taking action, the fear begins to melt away. Encourage your children to be strong and act in spite of the fear they are feeling. Practice at home until they feel more comfortable. Celebrate their courage!

Faith, on the other hand, is a bit more elusive. It's sometimes difficult to explain what faith is to children, let alone teach it. The Bible defines faith this way, "Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it." (Hebrews 11:1 (NCV). Begin by praying together, and having simple conversations about God. Allow your children to ask difficult questions, but don't be afraid if you don't have all the answers. Watch movies and read books together that provide powerful illustrations of faith. A great movie/book for talking about faith is The Polar Express. In this story, a doubtful child is asked to venture into the unknown and mysterious to a place where children's dreams come true.

Moms can be instrumental in helping children alleviate school stress. Which of these skills are your children strong in, and where do they need to grow?


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